


Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge

by SillyCeliac



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cannibalism, Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Crime Scenes, Dark, Dark Will Graham, Dissociation, Emo, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hallucinations, How much angst is too much angst, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Murder, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Revenge, Self-Harm, Sexual Tension, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:42:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29283195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SillyCeliac/pseuds/SillyCeliac
Summary: He had been used and abused by countless people who exploited his empathy and intelligence and body and soul for their own selfish, egotistical gain. He was left with nothing but a traitorous and broken heart beating in his husk of a body.They. Took. Everything.EVERYTHING.And then they took Hannibal.If God wasn't willing to let him die, Will could at least send a few people to Hell in his stead.____________________A post-fall Dark!Will fic, inspired by the lyrics and concept behind My Chemical Romance's album, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.
Relationships: Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 18
Kudos: 51





	1. Prologue: Demolition Lovers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to all the 00's emo kids who are finding out it was never really just a phase.
> 
> Spoilers in end notes—beware.

_"Hand in mine, into your icy blues_

_And then I'd say to you, 'We could take to the highway_

_With this trunk of ammunition, too'_

_I'd end my days with you, in a hail of bullets."_

_-_ My Chemical Romance, "Demolition Lovers"

* * *

"Going my way?" Hannibal Lecter opened the cruiser door and smirked at Will Graham over the corpse of the police officer he had just shoved out of the passenger seat. Despite himself, he never could help but hopelessly flirt with the weary FBI profiler. The afternoon sun shone gold across Will's face. He looked like a painting. _Stunning._

Hannibal watched as Will bent down to grab the gun off the officer's body and climbed into the police cruiser, closing the door behind himself. He took several steadying breaths, Hannibal noticed, likely to ground himself in the moment. 

"Ok, where the fuck are we going?" Will sighed as he briefly pinched the bridge of his nose. "I assume you have a plan. You always have a plan."

"Patience, Will. You really do worry too much." With a playful flash in his eyes, and delighted that Will placed such trust in his foresight, Hannibal hit the gas and they were off. 

Will shifted, and Hannibal could not help but glance at the small bit of skin that was momentarily bared while Will tucked the acquired gun in his waistband, against the small of his back. Three years without human contact—without _Will's_ contact—had taken a small toll on his calculated self-discipline.

"Seatbelt, Will." Hannibal jabbed, trying to excuse his leer and likewise trying to regain some semblance of control over his train of thought.

"You took a bone saw to my _skull_ , and now you're worried about my car safety habits?" Will scowled. 

"A momentary lapse in judgment," Hannibal smirked at the sudden fire in Will's words. He had quite missed his sarcastic quips.

After a beat, Will sighed and grabbed the seatbelt with more force than necessary, clearly putting every ounce of annoyance and frustration into his movements as possible. The seatbelt locked and Will muttered curses under his breath. Hannibal stifled a chuckle as Will once more attempted, this time with success, to buckle himself in the passenger seat.

A moment passed in silence before Will spoke. "You know Jack intends for you to die, right?"

"I had figured as much. Do you intend to let me?"

Will shifted to look at Hannibal's angular profile. "If you are to die...I intend that you die by no one's hands but my own." He said slowly and pointedly.

Hannibal's heart leaped at the blatant possessiveness that Will's words held. His grip on the steering wheel tightened as he swallowed thickly. He kept his eyes on the road ahead of them. _Remarkable thing,_ he thought.

* * *

They arrived at an angular cliffside house off a gravel road sometime later. Hannibal had taken precautions to conceal the police cruiser, disabling the GPS tracker several miles back and hiding their physical tracks well. Despite his fastidiousness, he knew it was likely, if not guaranteed, that the Red Dragon was following their every move.

The modern yet modest—by Hannibal's standards—house sat precariously close to the edge of a bluff that tumbled into dark water below. The low sun reflected off a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, situated to take advantage of the seascape. 

Hannibal approached the edge of the cliff, taking in the view of the expansive ocean kissing the horizon. Will's footsteps sounded carefully a ways behind him.

"The bluff is eroding. There was more land when I was here with Abigail," Hannibal observed, hearing Will's footsteps stop at the mention of her name. "More land still when I was here with Miriam Lass."

"And now you're here with me." Will resumed walking, coming to rest a comfortable distance behind Hannibal. 

"And the bluff is still eroding. You and I are suspended over the roiling Atlantic. Soon all of this will be lost to the sea."

Hannibal lingered a moment longer before turning on his heel and heading back towards the house. Will stepped closer to the edge and took in the sights for himself.

Hannibal quickly located the false garden rock that held the spare key. He deftly unlocked the front door and held it open, gesturing politely for his companion to enter. Will shuffled awkwardly towards the house before striding past the threshold. Hannibal followed closely behind, closing and locking the door.

"It is unlikely we will see our friend until nightfall, so feel free to do as you like," Hannibal said as he removed dust cloths from several pieces of furniture. "Your room is just down this hall should you wish to rest." 

"I...have my own room?" Will stuttered. Even after all this time, it was interesting to see that Will still did not fully grasp the depth of Hannibal's fixation and consideration.

"Naturally," Hannibal stated without pause. "What sort of host would I be if I did not provide for my guest?" 

Hannibal left Will to his own devices for the time being and walked to the main bedroom. He promptly entered the adjoining en suite bathroom, itching to take a private shower with actual water pressure for the first time in three years. Undressing, he sneered to himself in the mirror as he removed the heinous jumpsuit he had been forced to endure. Hannibal noted to himself that if given the chance, he really must burn it as soon as possible. 

He turned on the shower and stepped in, reveling in the moment the warm water falling from the luxurious showerhead touched his skin. He scrubbed his body with his favorite locally sourced, handmade, herbal soap and let the years at the BSHCI flow off of him with the water and disappear down the drain. He was here with Will, and no matter the end result, he intended to savor every moment of their time together.

After lingering nostalgically on the scarred lines marring both his wrists, he completed his wash. He stepped out of the shower and dried off with a plush towel, wrapping it around his waist. Then spritzing himself with a woody cologne complementary to his soap, he removed and neatly folded the towel onto the towel bar and stepped into the large walk-in closet. 

Racks and shelves of meticulously organized clothing and accessories lined the walls. It was by no means his extensive Baltimore wardrobe, but it would do. Hannibal scanned the room, re-familiarizing himself with the options at his disposal.

His hand drifted towards a burgundy plaid three-piece suit set. A classic but predictable choice. It would go remarkably well with that navy pocket square. But it would not lend itself to hand-to-hand combat or travel, should either need arise, especially in his somewhat deconditioned state. Maybe during the height of his reign as the Chesapeake Ripper, but not now. _Another time, then._

Instead, Hannibal selected a grey cashmere sweater and tailored taupe sports coat with a subtle blue weave. To pair with the coat, he pulled taupe slacks down from a hanger and grabbed some brown leather wingtip shoes from a shelf. He laid the clothes out on the dressing bench and stepped into some complementary black silk boxer shorts. Not that he was being presumptuous his evening would go anywhere, but he always planned for every eventuality. 

He finished dressing and combed and styled his hair in the mirror. It was shorter than he liked. Perhaps he would find the hairdresser from the hospital and show his displeasure on a grander scale than he was able to at the time of the offense.

Hannibal exited his bedroom and made his way to the living room. Will was nowhere to be seen. _Probably gawking at his room_ , Hannibal mused. He had to have found the many dog beds in the closet by now, along with various clothing options, all in his size, of course. He smirked.

He made his way towards the antique harpsichord. He opened the lid to the soundboard, caressing the fine woodwork, and braced it against the lid stick. It had been so long since he had played anywhere other than in his mind palace. He sat down at the stool and reverently opened the key cover, taking time to memorize the feel of the ivory keys on his fingertips. He took a focusing breath with his eyes closed and began to play. 

The melody was haunting and evanescent as only the harpsichord could truly capture. That was what he liked about the instrument—the notes were sharp and existed solely in the moment—quite unlike a piano whose notes lingered on through a room and through time. He fancied the harpsichord a metaphor for life, more fleeting and temporal than anyone cared to realize.

Hearing the music, Will ventured out of his room and down the hall, footsteps headed towards the living room. Hannibal's lip curled slightly upwards but otherwise gave no indication of his awareness of the other man's presence. It was unnecessary after all these years. 

"Haven't heard this one before."

"I should expect not," Hannibal said as he paused his playing, opening his eyes and turning to Will. He observed, mildly disappointed, but not surprised, that Will was still wearing the white button-down and navy slacks he arrived in, though sans coat. "It is an original composition I pieced together during my stay. I had to keep myself occupied somehow while you were off playing house."

"What, planning their murder wasn't _engaging_ enough, Dr. Lecter?" Will sneered sarcastically as he lowered himself into a plush armchair, unbuttoning his sleeve cuffs and rolling them up his forearms. 

Hannibal did not bother to dignify that with a response, in part because he did not regret his actions against Will's cookie-cutter "family," and in part because he was distracted by the casual manner in which Will revealed more of his skin to him. He turned back to the harpsichord, closed his eyes, and resumed his serenade.

Several moments passed without words as Hannibal continued to play, putting every ounce of longing and pain and loneliness that inspired the piece in the first place into his nimble fingers. He needed Will to know—surely, he had to know that the song was for him—that everything Hannibal did was for him now, and had been for a long time.

He dared to open his eyes and permitted himself a subtle glance at Will as he continued. The man was peacefully resting his head on the back of the chair with his eyes closed. The setting sun over the ocean shone through the wall of windows and danced on his form, painting him with perfect chiaroscuro reminiscent of the renaissance masters. He watched as he swallowed, his reclining neck gracefully displayed. _B_ _eautiful creature,_ Hannibal contemplated. 

His fingers briefly faltered as he was caught up in the allure of it all and he turned his gaze sharply back to the keyboard, hoping that, for once, the discerning profiler was not paying attention. 

"Hannibal...I," Will said, raising his head. Of course he noticed. He always did.

Hannibal sighed and stopped playing, turning to look Will in the eyes. His gaze was met straight-on. What a far cry from that nervous, twitchy man Hannibal met in Jack's office. _How much you have grown,_ Hannibal reveled silently, smiling. 

"I don't know how tonight is going to go and I don't want us to have the same misunderstanding as that night in your kitchen." Will took a shaky but sobering breath as he leaned forward in his seat. "I-I'm your man in the room. You realize that, right? I always was."

Hannibal's breath hitched in his throat for a split second, a tear in his flawless person suit, before resuming normally. He searched Will's eyes for any indication this could be an attempt at manipulating his weakness...and found nothing but startling, honest warmth. Overwhelmed by the unexpected intimacy, Hannibal was the one to avert his eyes. 

Will stood slowly and wiped his palms on the front of his trousers.

"I was ready to leave with you then, and I'm...I'm ready to do the same now. Fuck the FBI, fuck Jack…fuck the whole of Greece." A blush threatened to creep past Will's collar. 

Hannibal braced himself against the harpsichord, knuckles white, cursing his human biology for betraying him, and Will for affecting him so. He simultaneously hated and loved the man for being so able to easily scale his walls.

"Divine intervention alone, right?" Will stepped closer, hands now in his pockets. He glanced at the ground and then again at Hannibal through his dark eyelashes. Hannibal's heart skipped a beat.

With great effort, he released his death grip on the antique instrument and shifted to face Will more fully. 

Will took another step towards the harpsichord and Hannibal rose until he stood in place next to the stool. 

"Will, I must confess that the last time you attempted to gain my trust, things did not go well." Hannibal feigned confidence, but it was no use. Will could always see through the facade. 

Will chuckled low, and something inside of Hannibal's chest fluttered. "Last time, I wasn't entirely sure where I stood, and I was half as sincere in my attempt to communicate that with you." He stepped closer. 

"And is this your sincere attempt at communication? Quite brave of you." 

Will hummed in approval and took even another step closer. Will never initiated this version of closeness. Hannibal could feel the warmth radiating off of him now. His hand reached back to brace himself subtly against the harpsichord. 

"Is it your intention to distract me and work alongside Francis Dolarhyde to take me down, Will? Was it surprising when you heard from him? Or is this something else?"

The answer was inconsequential—Hannibal would take whatever Will gave him—but he was curious. 

Will closed the remaining distance and placed his hands on the lapels of Hannibal's blazer. Hannibal saw Will smirk as his body went rigid under the touch. 

"Something else," Will murmured, his eyes dark, more black with his widened pupil than they were blue.

Hannibal inched an unsure hand forward until it landed on Will's hip and he focused on breathing steadily. All of the air his lungs brought in smelled like Will, like the aftershave with a boat on the bottle. Even if the cologne was cheap and chemical, the mere memories of him that it stirred made it his favorite scent in the world. 

Will pulled him closer.

Hannibal hissed Will's name as his eyes fluttered closed. He never really could predict Will entirely, and this was certainly no exception. His practiced composure was all but ruined as he felt the other man's lips suddenly on his jaw. Hannibal's eyes snapped open and he growled. His hand left Will's hip and rose to clutch at his curls, sharply pulling his head back and forcing their eyes to meet. His eyes shone dark and heated as he flitted his gaze between Will's oceanic eyes. Will swallowed and Hannibal couldn't help but lick his own lips as he saw the delightful bounce of his Adam's apple. 

"Yes, _Hannibal_?" Will smirked breathlessly and slid his hands to lay flat on Hannibal's chest.

Silence.

"Why now?" 

Will's brow furrowed in mock thought. "Well, sunset isn't for another 45 minutes or so, and my bet is on one or both of us being either horribly wounded or dead by sunrise, so-"

"You very well know that is not what I meant, you terror." Hannibal chuckled as his hand came to cup Will's jaw. He brushed the pad of his thumb along the stubble on his cheek, the other fingers finding their place at Will's nape. 

Hannibal stared at him, waiting ever patiently until the silence was broken.

"Do you remember what I said about Cassie Boyle? 'It's like he had to show me a negative so I could see the positive.'" Will leaned into Hannibal's touch and closed his eyes. "The whole time I was with Molly and Walter, I think part of me felt like that. Like it wasn't...right. Like they didn't fit. Like _I_ didn't fit." Will exhaled pointedly. "I think I needed to know what life without you was like to know I didn't want anything but you." Silence. "God, Hannibal, I felt dead the whole time."

Hannibal released a shaky breath he did not realize he was holding. "And now?"

Will's eyes opened and bored into Hannibal with a hunger he had never quite witnessed before. _Ravenous._ Hannibal felt that hunger heat up something inside of him, pooling low and stirring in his gut.

"Now, I feel _so_ _alive_." 

Hannibal's hand quickly left the edge of the harpsichord and gripped Will's waist, bunching up the white cotton fabric of his shirt until he could brush a sliver of the warm smooth skin underneath. He felt Will's hands grasp his shoulders. His grip tightened on the back of Will's neck as he pulled him closer into a feverish kiss.

Their first kiss was not tentative. They were both sure of what they wanted. They were finally consuming each other. It was rough and animalistic and Hannibal let his walls fall for the first time since he plunged the hooked knife into Will's tender flesh. He wanted to be seen again and this time, he trusted Will to see him. 

Hannibal clutched Will closer until their bodies were conjoined. He minded not if he never survived their separation. They fit so well together. Of course they did. Each line and angle on Hannibal's body found its way to rest perfectly against Will's, like the last puzzle piece being finally clicked into place. Hannibal wanted to crawl inside Will's skin and live in his blood and be the marrow in his bones. He wanted to be the fever in his brain and the air in his lungs. He wanted to be inside of Will any way he could and he wanted Will to be inside of him in any capacity he wished. He settled for running his tongue along Will's full top lip. Will, _perfect thing_ , opened his mouth in equal lust and adoration. 

Will tasted _exquisite_. He tasted warm and sweet and fresh. Hannibal was unable to stop the low whine that escaped his throat before it was muffled by the other man's welcoming mouth. Will's hands clutched tighter at Hannibal's broad shoulders and tugged outwards, clearly attempting to remove the coat that was one more layer separating them. Hannibal relented and admired the unrestrained way in which he was being undressed. He was glad he had decided against the three-piece suit after all, though it was a shame he could not be forced to savor this moment longer. The heat in his gut intensified.

Not one to be outdone, his hands moved to Will's waist and deftly untucked his shirt, fingertips lingering on the small of his back. Hannibal moved to the bottom button and began to slowly undo them, one after the other, trailing upwards in a torturous fashion. He removed himself from the kiss so he could better observe the effect he was having on Will. And it was _delicious_.

Will panted as a ruby flush overtook his entire complexion. His pupils were blown impossibly wide and his lips were swollen and slick. He was made for this. Hannibal maintained eye contact the entire time he undid the buttons on Will's white shirt. Will trembled under the intensity, his pulse beating heavy in his long, perfect neck. 

Hannibal's hands stopped at the third to last button and the other man let loose a strangled mewl as he pulled Will close, hooking a finger through a belt loop at each side of his hips. He felt Will's hands grab helplessly at his sweater.

"Mylimasis, darling," Hannibal sighed as he began to place languorous kisses along the line of Will's neck, breathing deeply his scent. "As much as I do not wish to be parted from you for one moment," Will tipped his head back in pleasure and Hannibal felt a strong hand grasp his hair. "I must admit I am far too jealous to allow this to happen by so many windows. I will not share you with anyone." 

Hannibal's hands moved to grab Will's, beginning to lead him down the hall. 

Will broke their grasp and Hannibal turned in question, wondering if he had done something wrong. Hannibal felt as Will, _cunning thing_ , took this calculated opportunity to catch him off guard and slam him against the wall next to the main bedroom door. Hannibal was pinned by the shoulders as he felt the velvet heat of Will's tongue being dragged from his collarbone to his jaw. A long, shivering moan escaped Hannibal and he could not stop his hands from flying towards Will's dark curls, but Will jerked back, licked his divine lips, and released Hannibal's shoulders. 

"After you, Dr. Lecter," Will gestured with his hand and Hannibal's jaw dropped slightly as he watched the door being kicked open. 

They barely made it to the oversized bed before gravity forced them off their feet.

* * *

Hannibal watched as Will stood casually facing the windows in the living room, catching the remaining glow of sunlight disappear behind the horizon as the waning moon took its place in the sky. His hands moved gracefully as he finished buttoning up his shirt and tucking it back in place underneath the waistband of his pants. The flush was still fading from his cheeks, and Hannibal quite regretted not having a sketchbook handy.

"You are playing games with yourself in the dark of the moon." Hannibal wandered over to the window and placed his hands around Will's waist, nestling his face into warm, soft curls. Will leaned back into his touch. "You need not be so anxious."

"I just—" Will sighed and turned around in their embrace to face Hannibal. "I never seem to get to hold onto anything I care about for long. Though I can thank _you_ for most of that, I guess."

"I did warn you that I do not share well, mano meilė." He placed a peck on Will's downturned lips. "What use does worrying serve you, if you regardless cannot ensure the outcome?"

"Habit, I suppose." He watched as Will pulled back and scrubbed at his eyes.

Hannibal drifted to the modest wine rack by the dining table and selected a familiar label. The inexpensive Sangiovese. He had been saving it for so long, and tonight felt like the perfect moment. He grabbed the corkscrew and two—no, three crystal wine glasses. He might as well prepare for their guest's inevitable arrival. He was likely already lurking in the shadows nearby.

He made his way back to Will, setting two of the glasses on the edge of the harpsichord. Will turned towards the movement and Hannibal tracked his eyes to rest on the bottle in his hands.

"Is-is that the wine I brought you the night of your dinner party?" He did a double-take.

"I had been saving it for a special occasion. Now seems as good a time as any." Hannibal shrugged and stepped closer to hand a glass to Will.

"You've always been this sentimental then?" Will grabbed the glass.

"My compassion for you is inconvenient, Will."

Hannibal removed the golden foil from the top of the wine bottle and unfolded the corkscrew. He uncorked the wine and took a moment to smell the plummy, earthy notes as they existed on the cork. Will held out his glass and, knowing he could deny him nothing, Hannibal promptly poured the red liquid into it. 

"He's watching us now," Will remarked, sipping his wine.

Hannibal nodded, grabbed his wine glass from the harpsichord, and filled it in kind. He raised it slightly in a toast.

* * *

Hannibal suddenly found it very difficult to breathe. 

The wine he was holding crashed maroon on the marble floor as the crack and tinkle of fracturing glass sounded from behind him. Glancing down, he noticed a dark spot beginning to bloom on his sweater which mingled with the stain of spilled wine. His knees buckled beneath him and he collided with the ground, clutching his side. 

He perceived a lanky, dark figure step from the shadows and into the light of the living room, a silver pistol extended towards Will's head. Will sipped his wine nonchalantly; non-threatening.

"Don't run," the intruder commanded Will. "I'll catch you."

Hannibal looked up and focused on the being who dared threaten his beloved. "Hello, Francis," he wheezed. 

_A collapsed lung, then._

"Hello, Dr. Lecter." 

"I am happy you chose life, Francis. Suicide is the enemy." _Gasp._ "You were seized by a fantasy world with the brilliance...and freshness...and immediacy of childhood." _Cough._ "It took you a step beyond alone."

Dolarhyde kneeled down, an imposing figure, keeping the firearm trained on Will, and unloaded a black duffle bag onto the ground. 

"I'm going to film your death, Dr. Lecter," he lisped as he assembled a tripod. "As dying, you meld with the strength of the Dragon."

"It is a glorious...and rather...discomforting idea." Hannibal's dark eyes turned to Will. Will stared back with concern and rage behind his otherwise serene expression, playing the part of the conspirator.

"Watching the film will be wonderful. But not as wonderful as the act itself." 

Something sparked in Francis Dolarhyde's black eyes. He was no longer the insecure man Hannibal had spoken to on the phone. No—he was the Great Red Dragon now. He was _Becoming._

Will gingerly reached for the gun at his back, but the Dragon was faster. A glint of light shone on steel and a knife was plunged deep into Will's cheek. Hannibal flinched and glared at the sight of someone else marking his beloved. Dark, venous blood began to flow its way into and onto a choking Will as the Dragon flung him past the shattered windows and onto the flagstone patio outside. 

Panting and yearning for a deep breath, Hannibal assessed the situation, taking control of the pain in his body and locking it away for now. A soft groan left his body as he worked his way out of his stained blazer. He had to be ready, and he thirsted for his revenge, no matter the cost. He wiped the aspirated blood from his chin and forced himself slowly upright.

He watched his beloved struggle under the moon as the Dragon pulled him upright. With a scream, Will tore the knife from his face and plunged the stained blade deep into his attacker's thigh. _Radiant._ This was _Will's_ Becoming. And Hannibal was blessed to be witness to this sacrosanct ritual.

The Dragon in turn pulled the knife from his femur and drove it into the collarbone of his bleeding prey. He lifted his knee to the small of Will's back, granting himself the leverage required to snap his spine, when Hannibal pounced.

He landed on the Dragon's back and wrapped his arm around the exposed throat of his enemy. The Dragon dropped Will and jerked forward, throwing Hannibal to the ground. Crimson poured from his abdomen as he rolled to the edge of the pavement. He could feel the blood rushing into the space his unpierced lung once filled. The Dragon was quickly advancing on his prone form, proverbial wings extended. Hannibal felt himself lifted off the ground by his throat, his hands seeking the neck of the Dragon with the same intent to strangle and to survive.

Glancing over the shoulder of his assailant, he watched as Will, with glory and murder and _God_ in his eyes, removed the knife from his shoulder and charged, spearing the Dragon twice in his side. Will was sent tumbling backward in reply and Hannibal received a swift kick to the already now-mortal wound in his side. Fortuitously though, in what seemed to be an act of Deus Ex Machina, his reeling hand was sent to rest next to an axe, previously unnoticed, wedged deep in a chopping block. He almost laughed. 

Clutching his Act of God and working his way to his feet, Hannibal turned to the Dragon, who was focused on Will, and struck the blade of the axe deep into the Achilles tendon in the back of his calf. At the same moment, Will regained his balance and poised himself for attack, looking quite like an epic warrior from Greek amphorae. 

Desperate and fearful, the man inside peeked through the Dragon's exterior as Dolarhyde whipped his head from Will to Hannibal. 

Will slashed his blade through the unwounded thigh as Hannibal's axe came to slash again at the back of the knee. All three men staggered to their feet, two at a severe disadvantage.

Time slowed and minds merged as the two lovers closed in for the climax. They circled Francis as two apex predators, as seasoned pack hunters do before they feast on their quarry. Hannibal locked eyes with Will across the battlefield and delighted in the raw, unfettered savagery that burned in his darkened gaze. His heart threatened to stop beating at the sight.

Will had never looked more like himself. More complete.

Hannibal gasped under the rising pressure in his chest, gulping in air. Using an unexpected surge of energy, he sprung once more onto Dolarhyde's back, holding back the man's arms to present a wide target for Will to ravage.

His beloved rushed forward with an unprecedented fury and gutted the Dragon in confident, powerful jolts. Blood and viscera showered the front of Will's shirt as they met eyes. _Glorious._ Hannibal slanted down and gripped the trachea of their kill in his pointed teeth. He easily severed the skin and cartilage and arteries that clustered together to form life and tore the very essence of the Great Red Dragon from its body with an arc of crimson.

He fell to the ground a ways from a gurgling Dolarhyde, mouth full of coppery flesh, and swallowed his meal. It was a transcendent last supper. His limbs weakened as he melted into the ground and nearly all he could do was focus on taking in oxygen. He was cold.

"It really does look black in the moonlight," Will pondered, eyes running over his own smeared arms and Hannibal's blood-soaked sweater.

Hannibal's wheezing breath was shallow and quick. Will shakily knelt to the ground close at his side and gently smoothed the hair from the bleeding man's eyes. 

"See?" Hannibal panted. His eyes unfocused and rolled momentarily, his lids threatening to close. Gathering his remaining strength, he grabbed the back of Will's neck with a bloodied hand. "This is all I wanted for you, Will."

Will leaned even closer and placed a kiss on his forehead and then the corner of his lips. A tear dropped from his blue eyes and ran across the gaping wound on his cheek, cutting through the blood staining his face crimson.

"For both of us." Hannibal swallowed thickly and twitched his fingers against Will's curls. He could ask for nothing more in his long-anticipated denouement but to have his equal at his side.

Will caught the sob threatening to leave his throat and choked out, "It's beautiful." And it was. He took a moment to rest his head on Hannibal's warm chest and listen to the strained heartbeat. He committed the gentle thump to memory, remembering it with all of his being. This moment would come to be relegated to a room in a riverside cabin, near the mental stream he fished in.

He then shifted to gently straddle Hannibal, keeping most of his weight off of him. He leaned close and took both of Hannibal's paling cheeks in his hands. They stared into each other's eyes with an equal knowing. Will's hands slowly shifted down to Hannibal's neck, almost in a caress. He had to be the one to do this--they both knew it. Will would be damned if Dolarhyde was the one to take him, and Hannibal would be damned if he relented to anyone else. 

Their eyes remained locked on each other's as Will's hands slowly tightened. This was the final consummatory act in their own sounder of three. A peaceful smile hinted at Hannibal's mouth, sated and accepting. Everything was right. 

Hannibal's already weakening pulse started to falter underneath his grip. His throat clenched and swallowed instinctively, one last involuntary attempt of his body to survive.

His mouth spread wide into a bloody, toothless grin. Hannibal's last thought was how beautiful Will's eyes shone when he was killing. When he was _Becoming._

* * *

Will registered the light leaving Hannibal's eyes before he did the feeling of the spray of warm blood blanketing his face. He registered the sudden slackness of Hannibal's muscles underneath his hands before he heard the sound of the gunshot and the ringing in his ears. 

_No._

Will reeled back onto his feet automatically, adrenaline surging through his veins as he scrambled to piece together what had just happened. Grey matter splattered across the flagstone, mixing with the still accumulating pool of blood at Hannibal's head. 

_**NO**. _

Hannibal wasn't moving anymore—Dolarhyde _certainly_ wasn't moving anymore. Bile was rising in Will's throat and the muffled sounds of someone shouting commands echoed in his still buzzing ears. 

Will felt the panic like a cornered animal. So he rushed towards the edge and jumped. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Put down the fork, I'm not leaving the rest of this fic without any Hannibal content just because he died.
> 
> Also maybe don't count the amount of times I said "harpsichord." I shudder to think.
> 
> Lithuanian Translations:  
> Mylimasis= beloved, lover  
> Mano mielė= my love
> 
> I expect this will run for 15 chapters.
> 
> I may plan a separate work for the sexy scene I so rudely faded to black on. I'd like to make sure I do it justice.
> 
> <3


	2. So Long and Goodnight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Yes...the song title is technically Helena...)
> 
> CW: Suicidal intentions/thoughts

_"Burning on,_

_Just like a match you strike to incinerate_

_The lives of everyone you know._

_And what's the worst you take_

_From every heart you break?_

_And like the blade you stain,_

_Well, I've been holding on tonight."_

-My Chemical Romance, "Helena (So Long and Goodnight)"

* * *

Will's head breached the surface of the icy Atlantic and his lungs instinctually gasped for air. His arms flailed wildly in the water despite the pain in his shoulder, and his legs kicked with a fury despite his knee not quite feeling right. His body wanted to live, but his soul didn't. 

If God existed, They had to be joking to have allowed him to survive this fall. He didn't deserve to. He certainly hadn't meant to. He died back on the pavement with Hannibal. 

_Hannibal._

His stomach turned and his head felt light. He was in shock. His useless limbs were still flailing about in an attempt to keep him afloat. _Why?_ _What use is there?_ Maybe he should just stop struggling against the elements and sink below the waves. 

He forced his muscles to go slack and exhaled the traitorous breath his body dared to take without his express consent. 

As he drifted below the churning water, he watched the rising air bubbles glitter in the refracted moonlight until they stopped escaping from his mouth altogether. He imagined Hannibal's warm hands around his waist, pulling him close as they sank into oblivion together. He smiled and waded into the stream, content to never leave.

* * *

It was the first time she'd caught anything. Ever. Abigail Hobbs' beaming grin threatened to break her face. She shrieked in delight as she hauled a decently sized largemouth bass above the water. The swampy green fish fought fruitlessly against the hook lodged deep in its throat. A landing net came into view at her side and Abigail lowered the twitching bass into it. 

"I did it!" She thrilled, struggling to jump up and down in her waterlogged waders. She tried anyway.

"You did!" Will was holding the net, beaming with an equal sense of pride and satisfaction, his eyes crinkling. He removed the hook and accompanying fly from its mouth with a skill that only came from years of experience. "Good thing too, because now you've scared the rest of them away." 

Abigail whipped her head around to face him and scowl. How dare he rain on her parade? 

Will smiled apologetically, "It'll make a fine dinner."

"What kind of pretentious thing do you bet Dad'll make out of it?"

"Something with an inedible frilly garnish."

"Obviously," she scoffed. 

They trudged against the current until they reached the banks where their extra equipment was laid. Holding his unladen hand out to Abigail, Will clasped her forearm and pulled her to the shore. He helped her place the bass in the gathered river water of the bucket next to the smaller fish he had caught an hour or two before. 

"Slimy," she observed, wiping her hands on her khaki fly vest.

Will chuckled. 

They packed up the tackle box and gathered their remaining supplies in their arms, with Will holding the sloshing bucket. 

In pleasant silence, they made their way back to their riverside cabin as the lowering sunbeams painted the flora around them like Midas, turning everything they touched into gold. The specks of floating chaff and buzzing insects sparkled like rustic glitter in the air. The breeze and chirping of evening birds sounded like a sweet aria and echoed through the autumn-red trees. It was a veritable paradise; their own Eden.

Their cabin was an old weathered stone and wood thing with a wrap-around porch. It was nestled between a grove of aging maple and oak trees, whose leaves were now in the process of shedding to the ground. A durable chimney of matching grey stone rose from behind the eaves of the shingled roof and spilled smoke into the sky. Warm light shone through the aging window panes. It was relatively humble but spacious enough for their needs and Hannibal's gourmet kitchen upgrade—which really _was_ a need, it was stressed. Will had rolled his eyes at the time but relented after being plied with the concession of being allowed a room just for the dogs. 

Will and Abigail walked over to a modest shed that cozied up to the northern wall of the cabin and put the rods and tackle box in their designated spots. They hung their waders on the hooks to dry and then moved to a small stainless steel table and set the bucket holding their catch on top. 

"Just like I taught you, ok?" Will handed a thin ice pick with a flared base to Abigail, who smiled politely in reply.

He placed the first bass on the tabletop, holding it across the middle to stop its weak thrashing, and nodded.

She reached a hand near the fish's gills, located the spot behind its eyes, took a deep breath, and drove the spike into its brain. The bass seized once...twice...and then stilled. 

Will's thoughts faltered and his balance tipped as he saw the light leave the fish's eyes. _Too familiar._ He righted himself quickly, though, and reached to hand a small boning knife to Abigail. 

She made three precise cuts: one behind each gill sac, and one at the base of the tail. She set the exsanguinating fish aside and repeated the process on the second fish. This time, Will looked away when she rendered it braindead.

Abigail took a scaler and removed the scales, and then skillfully gutted them, handing the remains to Will to put into the composter—fertilizer for Hannibal's garden. She looked back at Will in anticipation for praise of a job well done.

"Impressive," Will assured, after analyzing the precision with which their meat was prepared.

Abigail gave a sarcastic half-bow and grabbed the fish by their gills. Will wiped down the table with an old stained rag and some disinfectant and they both took their leave of the shed, locking it behind them. They walked up four creaky steps to the front door of the house and entered into the warm, cozy interior. Hannibal was sitting on a brown leather armchair with a book in hand, no doubt written in a language that had been dead for millennia, tapping his finger in time to the Baroque chamber music he had lilting in the background. The dogs—Winston, Buster, Max, Zoe, Harley, Jack, and Ellie—lay snuggled together on the ground nearby, surrounding a stone fireplace which was alight and warming the room temperature nicely.

"Will, Abigail—" Hannibal started, looking up from his book.

"I caught one!" Abigail all but screamed, gleefully. 

A feline grin rose on Hannibal's face as he stood tall, placing his reading on the antique side table. He reached for a small remote and stopped the music. 

"Did you, now?"

"It's the bigger one, too," Will added, cleaning his boots on the entry rug. He moved over to the seven dogs of various sizes and scrappiness on the floor and ran his tired hands through their scruff, one by one, praising them for their impeccable behavior in a voice he reserved only for them. There were so many wagging tails.

"I will be sure to honor it appropriately, then." Hannibal walked to the kitchen and pulled out a large butcher-block-style cutting board. He set it on the speckled black granite island and gestured towards Abigail. She moved alongside him and placed the fish on the cutting board.

"A simpler dish will be a fine tribute, I think. Your catch will be the star of the show, Abigail." He declared, removing a white half-apron from the drawer and tying it around his waist. His dark eyes flitted about the kitchen as he mentally took stock of the ingredients he would use. "Now, go clean up, you two. The only scent of fish I mean to abide at our table will be that of our meal." 

Will, having followed the two into the kitchen, trailing dogs behind him, leaned in with mischief flashing in his eyes and placed a kiss on Hannibal's prominent cheek. Hannibal jerked away and stared daggers at him as he prepared a dampened towel to scrub at the offending endearment. 

"Terror."

"You like it," Will teased as he left towards the bedroom. 

After a quick, thorough, and utilitarian shower with soaps he couldn't pronounce, Will dressed in a lightly distressed coral button-down and dark-wash jeans. He even combed back his wet hair. Hannibal was getting to him.

Abigail finished her shower first, so she was helping set the dining table to the exacting specifications required of Hannibal's aesthetics when Will reentered the living space. Hannibal was completing his worship in the kitchen, plating intricately folded parcels of parchment paper, each of which held a white filet, cooked and seasoned to perfection, adding, as predicted, a pretentious garnish to the top: a lemon rind strip curled in a helix around a sprig of homegrown thyme. Capers and cherry tomatoes rested beside the origami presentation, crowned by thin lemon wedges. 

"White, I assume?" Will inquired, gesturing to the expansive wine rack. 

"A Chablis, if you would." 

He grabbed the nearest qualifying one he could find— _wine was wine—_ filled an ice bucket, put the bottle in it, and brought them to the table. 

Abigail and Will sat in their usual seats, Abigail to the left, and Will at the right. The place at the head was reserved for Hannibal, of course. This was his sphere of influence after all. He directed the culinary performance with all the poise a maestro does his orchestra. The food was his concerto, and his chosen family the adoring patrons. 

Hannibal removed the miraculously unstained apron from about his middle and folded it into a drawer. He left momentarily down the hall and returned, now wearing a burgundy plaid suit coat with a navy pocket square. He smoothed the front as he walked back into the kitchen, banishing nonexistent wrinkles and lint underneath his touch.

With the dexterity of a trained dancer, he took the plates of artistry in his arms and placed one at each table setting, smiling smugly as he went.

"Bass _en papillote_ cooked in garden-fresh cherry tomatoes and capers." Hannibal winked at Abigail as he sat in his seat.

"And one pretentious garnish," Abigail smirked at Will. 

"Also from our garden." Hannibal returned. Coming from anyone but the two in front of him, he would have been offended. Instead, he smiled—it was kind of endearing, after all. 

They all began to eat, savoring the product of their collective hard work. _Life was perfect,_ Will thought. 

Why was he so anxious then? Everything was fine. The dogs were milling about but keeping themselves away from the table like they were taught to. Abigail brushed a lock of chestnut hair behind her ear, taking a bite, and Hannibal focused on Will's throat as it moved with the food he ate. He wondered how he hadn't realized the intentions behind his salacious gaze sooner. Regretted not acting on it sooner. 

But yes—everything was fine.

Until a creak caught Will's attention as it sounded from the hall behind his seat. He whipped around, nerves alight like a live wire. What made that noise? That wasn't supposed to happen, it was just them here.

He took a shaky sip of wine from the sweating goblet in front of him.

The noise was a door squeaking open. The one he never opened. 

The one he kept chained and welded shut and bricked up behind his fort.

But it swung open nonetheless.

Will's wine glass fell from his tremulous grip, crashing on the floor and shattering into thousands of pieces.

He watched as blood flew from a widening slash in Abigail's throat, drenching the meal and tablecloth in front of her with a crimson, coppery cascade. She grasped at her neck to staunch the flow and gaped at Will with the same panicked ice-blue eyes he had seen only twice before. She plummeted to the hardwood floor into a puddle of her own gore before he had a chance to react.

Then, the sound of a window shattering echoed through the room. The ivory wall behind Hannibal's seat at the head of the table was turned into a Jackson Pollock painting of ruby and pale pink as he slumped back in his seat. The heavier fragments of bone and brain slid down towards the ground, trailing and staining as they went.

After the resounding echo of destruction faded, the air stilled and no one but Will made a sound. They couldn't. Even then, it was his own sobbing intake of oxygen that split the silence.

He felt the floor leave from underneath him and he tumbled into a murky void.

* * *

Will awoke with a start, torn from his nightmarish fantasy as he felt the piercing pain of his knee being yanked back into alignment. His eyes flew open wide and a primal scream escaped his lungs. 

God's joke was getting old. 

The pain running through his body was nothing compared to the all-consuming emptiness he felt when he heard his heart beating with sedition in his chest and sensed his lungs filling with air reflexively. 

Will was laying on a double bed in a cramped space. He was very dizzy. It didn't help that harsh electric light shone in his eyes and he smelled rubbing alcohol and the ocean in the air. His wet hair seeped seawater into the pillow beneath his head. He was naked underneath the gray blanket.

His left hand chased out towards a dark figure beside him with less strength and dexterity than he had hoped or expected. A small but powerful hand grasped his wrist and threw it back.

"Don't make me tie you up," a familiar gentle, accented voice said. "I'm almost done."

The figure shuffled and then he felt a pinch and tugging at his cheek. He blinked several times to try and acclimate to his surroundings. His eyes finally focused on Chiyoh's shadowed, angular face. A few strings of long, wet, black hair fell from her ponytail and into her face as she worked to stitch up the gash on his face.

Waking up _alive—_ and for all purposes alone—was akin to being forcibly taxidermied. As though all of the living and feeling flesh and organs and beating blood and bones inside of him were as good as gone. As though now fluff and wool and wood and wire were his support, his stitched and flayed skin holding the insensate facade together. All meaning for his existence and any sense of hope for the future was shattered by the same bullet that shattered Hannibal's skull.

With a final tug of the forceps and snip of the scissors, Chiyoh finished the sutures on Will's cheek and moved to assess the damage to his clavicle.

"You should have let me drown," Will croaked, his throat raw. 

"Yes."

Silence.

"So why didn't you?"

Will was ignored as Chiyoh opened another package of sterile gauze and cleaned some of the blood surrounding the stab wound. She assessed that the knife missed the vital structures in his shoulder and shouldn't require any reconstruction which fell beyond her skill set. Mostly surface stitches, then. With an alcohol swab and saline wash, she disinfected and flushed the area, ignoring Will's small hiss of pain. As with the cheek, she injected lidocaine in several places surrounding the cut and prepared another suture kit. 

Will stared blankly at the ceiling. The floor was moving slowly, and he recognized the gentle sway as ocean waves underneath the boat he must be on. Time passed in silence as Chiyoh added the tenth, then eleventh stitch, tying a knot and snipping off the excess thread with practiced ease. She wrapped the ailing knee to provide support and bandaged the wounds on his face and shoulder. She turned off the light focused over the bed.

"Hannibal?" She asked, not entirely sure she wanted to know the answer.

Will swallowed several times, eyes closed, and he shook his head with a jerk. _Mistake._ He was even dizzier. 

All of his senses and emotions were already overflowing and the simultaneous pressure and emptiness inside of his head grew until it all had to come out somehow. Luckily for Chiyoh, she moved out of the way just in time as wine and blood and seawater and bile made a sudden appearance from where it was churning in his stomach. 

She sighed slowly and gathered the spent gauze and empty syringes in a pile to dispose of. She grabbed towels to wipe up the floor. After things were satisfactorily clean, she peeled blue nitrile gloves off of her hands and into a small trash bin. She turned back to Will, standing in clothes soaked with the ocean, now holding a small cup of water and a handful of pills.

"Take these if you can, and rest. I need to change." 

She stiffly handed Will what he correctly assumed to be a mixture of antibiotics and painkillers, which were easily swallowed with the water she provided. Luckily for him, whatever seemed to nauseate him was gone for the moment. Besides, it was easier to do as he was told than it was to put a cogent rebellious thought together at this point. 

He felt numb.

* * *

Will drifted in and out of sleep for the next few hours, his blood humming with morphine and the trauma of a near-death experience. 

He shifted on the plush mattress underneath the soft covers and turned his head slightly...only to see out of his periphery Hannibal laying bare-chested beside him, gently playing with a loose curl that splayed onto the pillow beneath Will's head. 

He blinked several times. When the figure didn't change form or fade from view, he turned his head, sighed, and smiled longingly.

"They took you from me," Will murmured, his voice thick with sleep and painkillers.

"Did they now?" Hannibal shifted to place a chilled kiss on Will's forehead scar before drawing back. The proximity should have forced the vellus hairs there to register the soft sensation of another person breathing, but the air was hopelessly still.

He rotated partially onto his side to face Hannibal, careful of the throbbing in his shoulder. He looked normal...as striking as he looked when they held each other in bed in the house on the bluff. His skin was rosy—not pallid, and his gaze was sharp and attentive—not glassy nor distant. His silver-blond hair was delightfully mussed, and a contented upturn played at his lips.

He looked alive. Will reached out to cup his hand on Hannibal's angular cheek. But it was cold. It was so cold. 

He inhaled sharply and withdrew his hand. He'd rather look and pretend than touch and remember. Hannibal seemed to take notice and placed his own hand tenderly on the bedsheets between them. Will hesitantly placed his hand down in kind, their fingertips just millimeters apart. This could suffice.

Will stared into his golden-dark eyes, memorizing the sight of him for what felt like an eternity before the silence was broken.

"Tell me _mylimasis_ , what will you do?" 

Will exhaled slowly through his nose. He let his mind drift over the events of his life which led him to this point. The events which led him to this bed in a boat on the ocean, bruised and bleeding and hopelessly _alive_ , without a warm, breathing Hannibal at his side. 

When Jack approached him in his Quantico classroom all those years ago, he had no idea that the ensuing circumstances would lead him to the singular person who ever understood and accepted him in all his facets. Who _loved_ him. Who he loved back. And he likewise had no idea that they would later rip out his soul, naked and bleeding from underneath his skin by killing that same person. 

A tiny spark of rage began to alight the detritus filling his hollow chest.

Then he began to list the names of those along the way who took and took and _took_ and expected too much until they broke him over and over. Each name was a tinder which fueled the growing inferno inside of him. 

Jack.

Alana.

Bedelia.

Chilton.

And so, so many more. 

He had been used and abused by countless people who exploited his empathy and intelligence and body and soul for their own selfish, egotistical gain. Until he was left with nothing but a traitorous and broken heart beating in his husk of a body. 

_They. Took. Everything._

_EVERYTHING._

And then they took Hannibal.

If God wasn't willing to let him die, Will could at least send a few people to Hell in his stead.

"There was a time…" his eyes flickered. "I promised a reckoning." The words dripped from his mouth like venom on a snake's fang. 

An awed silence struck the dead man.

"My darling boy, you are _exquisite_ in your righteous anger. They will tremble at your feet as you measure their unworthy hearts against Ma'at's feather."

Leave it to Hannibal to compliment him with references to ancient lore. Will never quite understood the reverence with which he was spoken to in this regard. But he was beginning to. The pious, lustful gaze Hannibal bore into him as he gutted Dolarhyde was unmatched. Will had never felt so seen. Their love was forged time and time again on the bloody battlefield, and the fact they would never join war at each other's side again was one of the biggest regrets now consuming Will. 

The other was that he would never again feel the warm caress of their skin embracing and colliding and loving.

Resolutely, he moved his hand from the sheets to curl around the bicep of the frozen Hannibal laying beside him. Even in hallucination, or whatever the hell this was, Hannibal waited for Will to make the first move before descending on him. He inched closer, being led by Will's grip on his arm, which was tightening in intensity and desperation. 

Will turned to lay again on his back and yanked Hannibal on top of himself. Strong arms boxed either side of his face as a knee came to rest in the space between his thighs. His hips keened in longing. Impatient for contact, he pulled and clutched until their lips collided, no longer caring about the difference in body temperature. The other man's lips and tongue and face were frigid as death, but the avenging blaze combusting inside of Will was more than enough to warm them both.

"Stay with me?" Will pleaded like a prayer as he pulled back, out of breath.

"I never left."

* * *

Jimmy Price regretted not taking more aspirin with him to work that night. First, his head was pounding from the final throes of the bottomless margaritas he had with his dinner. _Mistake._ Second... _holy shit._

He scanned the crime scene again as he rubbed his arms for warmth, even though it was a moderate 62 degrees Fahrenheit out. The moon shone in the night sky and a gentle ocean breeze swept over the dozens of people analyzing every inch of the area surrounding the backyard of a cliffside house. Portable high-power floodlights were illuminating the scene. 

Brian Zeller was hovering over the pale, bloodied body of Hannibal Lecter, the _fucking Chesapeake Ripper,_ and examining a gaping wound in his side. Jimmy's usually iron-clad stomach lurched momentarily. It was always different when it was someone you knew—serial killer or not. Another body was laying perpendicular five feet to the right in a large pool of coagulated blood, identified as Francis Dolarhyde. His actual body, as it happened—not the one they found burning in a house with its face blown off.

_Jesus, what a month._

He walked over to Jack Crawford, who was yelling at some poor underpaid schmuck on his phone.

"What do you mean there's nothing? Drag the area again or get another search team out there! I. Want. Him. Found."

And, oh—yeah—Will Graham was nowhere to be seen. 

Jack ended his call and shoved the device angrily into the side pocket of his wool coat.

"Hey," Jimmy sighed, exhausted.

"Price. Tell me what you found." Jack was equally exhausted but made a stalwart effort to not let it show.

"There's blood spatter evidence that supports your report that a third person, presumably Will, went over the cliff. He would have been pretty wounded, Jack." He bit the inside of his cheek, considering. "And that's _before_ he would have fallen _well_ over a hundred feet into the ocean."

Jack sighed, his broad shoulders rolling forward almost imperceptibly. "Alright. Finish up and I'll see you at the lab." 

Price turned back to the theater of carnage he momentarily forgot was before him and changed into a fresh pair of latex gloves. He strode over to Zeller and the body that once housed a murderous psychiatrist. A quick glance and Jimmy had a pretty solid bet for the cause of death. Brain tissue laid curdled on the paving stones like some macabre plate of scrambled eggs.

"It was definitely the headshot," Brian confirmed. 

"No shit."

"It came from up there," he pointed to the sharply slanting roof of the house. "Not much of a mystery—it was one of our guys who pulled the trigger." He held up an evidence bag with a crumpled hunk of metal inside.

The angle of trajectory, Jimmy observed, meant that Dr. Lecter was lying supine, parallel to the line of shattered windows when the shot was fired, though he'd have to wait for the official analysis to be certain. The guy was a cannibalistic psychopath, sure, but it was against usual protocol to terminate someone who wasn't an active threat. 

"What about the other one?" Price stood and moved over to the body of Dolarhyde, served up on a darkening red plate.

Zeller followed. "Definitely loss of blood. It looks like they tag-teamed him. There's the bite wound on his throat here—probably what killed him, but he was also gutted with a bilateral cut to his abdomen. There are also a couple of different types of lacerations on the back of his legs, made by at least two different weapons. They found an axe and a folding knife nearby."

"Jesus." That didn't even begin to cover it. "It's a shame too, I was hoping to get an invite to his next dinner party," Jimmy pointed a thumb back towards Hannibal's body, deflecting with humor. It was one of his favorite coping mechanisms.

"Maybe his funeral will be catered."

"One can only hope."

An awkward and pregnant pause permeated the air. No one wanted to be the first to bring up the proverbial elephant in the room.

"So do you think Will was psycho after all? Or—" Zeller started after a while.

"All I think is that right now, a hot shower and about 50 shots of vodka would be nice." He _really_ didn't want to talk about it right now. He had liked Will, or still liked him. He couldn't decide. The evidence wasn't fully processed yet, anyway, so there was no rush to make up his mind.

"Fair enough. See you at the lab later?"

Jimmy Price just nodded and stood to leave.

This was one hell of a way to start a Thursday.

* * *

Will woke up alone hours or days later—he couldn't tell and didn't care. There was a peek of morning sunlight pressing its way through a slim window and through the crack under a door which led to what could only be the deck. 

He sat upright gingerly, carefully swinging his swollen knee over the side of the bed. The dizziness was fading, thankfully, and there was another pile of pills and a glass of water on the counter a couple of feet away. He warily made to stand up, testing the strength of his once-dislocated joint by easing his weight onto it. He was lucky—or he would have felt so if he cared enough about surviving at the time—because Chiyoh did a great job at reducing the displacement. He was able to limp over to the counter and take the medication and swig the tepid water, which soothed the soreness in the back of his throat but irritated the now healing wound in his cheek. He found a plush white bathrobe laying out for him, and put it on.

He made his way up the stairs with all the steadiness of a newborn deer, bracing himself on the narrow cabin walls as he went. He made his way to a glass-wrapped upper cabin that held the small but efficient galley, a seating area, and the controls. This boat was more luxurious than any he had ever been on, but that made sense given Hannibal's track record. Chiyoh was nowhere in sight so he made his way to the deck. It was excruciatingly bright outside, and there was no land in sight for miles. He raised a hand to block the noonday sun and squinted as much as he could without tugging on the stitches. 

He found her lounging, catlike on the sundeck at the bow. It was uncharacteristic of her, he thought, seeing as though the few interactions he had with her ended up in violence of some sort. He had pegged her as being more high-strung. Maybe his first impression was right, though, because her head turned omnisciently to stare at him out of the corner of her eye. 

"Guess I should just be glad it's not a train," Will joked hollowly. "You might push me off or something." He never was good with people.

Her head turned back to focus on some imperceptible spot off in the distance. After a beat, she gracefully stood upright and brushed past Will on her way to the upper cabin, purposefully tagging his injured shoulder. 

She pulled a container out of the mini-fridge in the galley and unceremoniously flung it and a fork onto the small folding table. 

"Eat."

She leaned back on the sideboards, crossing her wiry arms in front of her. Will made his way to the bench at the table and sat down, resting his impaired leg on the seat across from him. 

He ate whatever tasteless food of an indistinguishable texture laid in front of him as Chiyoh watched, eyes flitting between the bowl and the horizon.

"You are to stay until you are healed enough to fend for yourself."

Will choked on a bite. "I—what?" He grimaced. "Who died and left you in charge—" 

_Oh._

_Of course._

He coughed once. "I…uh…didn't…" 

"Hmm." She hummed tersely.

"Why you though?"

"You ensured I had nothing better to do." 

Will just nodded and finished eating. It would allow him time to put a better plan together anyway. He had to stay on this plane of existence...for now. He wasn't leaving this life until his bloodlust was properly sated and his brand of justice was done. 

He didn't know much about what all of his next steps were, but he knew where he was going to start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The amount of self control it took for me to delete the metaphor "swimming in fishie heaven" was astounding. 
> 
> I never thought I'd find myself writing gay cannibal fanfic to the theme of songs I cried to in middle school, but here we are. 
> 
> Bass en papillote recipe inspired by: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/sea-bass-in-papillote-236934 
> 
> <3


	3. Give 'em Hell, Kid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: PTSD, dissociation, a fuckton of blood.

_"If you were here,_

_I'd never have a fear_

_So go on live your life,_

_But I miss you more than I did yesterday._

_You're so far away._

_So c'mon show me how,_

_'Cause I mean this more than words can ever say."_

-My Chemical Romance, "Give 'Em Hell, Kid"

* * *

Ten relatively uneventful days of sleeping and eating and healing passed on the boat. Every so often, Chiyoh would take them to a new location in the waters further east off the coast of New England. They spent their time without exchanging more than a handful of words, as both were obliged to do. Will enjoyed the quiet—he needed it. He had a plan to formulate, after all, and his list of names kept getting longer.

In rummaging about the various cabinets and cubby holes of the sleek cruiser-style motor yacht, Will had found everything he could have needed in his pursuit for vengeance already on-board. Hannibal always was beyond meticulous when it came to preparation. 

"You really thought of everything, didn't you?" He turned from his pile of collected supplies on the double bed to flash a boyish grin at a smug, impeccably dressed Hannibal. 

"Always do." 

Will hummed in appreciation as a gentle kiss was placed upon his wild russet curls. 

He assayed his collection. Copious amounts of international and domestic currency, forged identifications, burner phones, chemical cocktails in all their varieties, an extensive first aid kit, firearms ( _handy, but they stopped being his arm of choice the moment Randall Tier flew into his living room_ ), and all other manner of weaponry. What stood out to Will were a few things, though. 

First—Hannibal had compiled a rather large wardrobe of fine, mostly neutral-toned, tailored clothing items and sleek Italian leather shoes in exactly Will's sizes. Presumptuous.

Second—one of those items was a perfectly-fitted clear vinyl murder suit. Equally presumptuous and practical.

And third—sitting in the bedside drawer had been the key to a safety deposit box from a bank in Delaware. Curious.

"Any chance you know anything about this that I don't?" Will faced him and held the small key aloft.

"I am certain you will figure it out, _mano mielė_." Hannibal cupped his chin, brushing the pad of his thumb over Will's pouting bottom lip, then stepped back and walked silently out of the bedroom. 

He was gone. 

Again. 

And Will was left alone. 

Again.

These visions weren't like the ones he had when he was sick with encephalitis—he _knew_ they weren't real. But he didn't care. At least he didn't until they were over and he was alone. 

It was too much. Will fell to his knees on the plush carpeted floor, holding his head in his hands.

He stayed like that, clutching his unruly hair under white-knuckled fingers, his knees getting sore from the pile of the rug beneath. In some ways, he was losing time now just as he had years ago. Unlike then, though, he now kept a very faint thread of memory of these moments. 

He ended up staring at the void under the bed, having laid on his good side in the fetal position without having made any conscious decision to. His mind was screaming yet silent and his face was stony and expressionless. His eyes blurred and his pain dulled. _Everything_ dulled as he crouched in the darkest forgotten corner of his mind, waiting for it to be safe to crawl out again. The crashing waves against the boat were echoing gunshots and the tears drifting down his face were the flowing blood drops that leaked from his cheek. Everything was that night. He felt paralyzed in his skin as he relived the sequence of events over and over in different blips and in different orders. He felt minuscule—as though hope wasn't even a concept that ever existed in the universe. He was a shadow, curled in on himself, catatonic.

The only thing that brought him out from the frozen abyss was a tiny flame of rage that kept him from death, much like the little match girl of fairy tale. The once dark window slowly filled with the pale wash of rising sunlight. He blinked his drying eyes several times as he reentered a state of awareness. It was slow going, but he was quickened by the spark of urgency in his burning chest. He had a job to do, after all. 

He washed away the aftershocks of his dissociation under a cold shower and dressed in a light grey button-down and charcoal slacks. He found the most casual pair of shoes he could and combed through his wet curls. He stared himself down in the mirror, trying to will away his dark circles and sallow coloration. His ocean eyes were distant and glazed over, still catching up with his return to reality. He felt like he was slowly rising from the dead. 

Returning to the bedroom, he packed the pile of supplies from the bed into a black nylon duffle bag. He threw some of the more casual clothing items unceremoniously into a small suitcase, bemoaning the "dry clean only" instructions printed on their tags, and stuffed several hundred-dollar bills into a black leather wallet, alongside a fake ID. The rest went into the duffle bag. He put the key to the safety deposit box on a chain around his neck, slipped it under his collar, and grabbed a houndstooth blazer. Shaking away the dregs of his breakdown with a shot of overpriced bourbon from a hip flask tucked in his jacket, he ascended the stairs to the upper cabin. 

Chiyoh was sitting on the bench at the table, eating a breakfast of potatoes, eggs, and sausage. She sipped from a mug of black coffee.

"Today," Will announced, landing on the top step.

She nodded and gestured absently towards a plate and steaming mug on the counter, filled with a similarly hearty breakfast. Despite her misanthropic exterior, she was nothing if not dutiful in her care for his physical wellbeing this time around. 

Will laid his jacket on the back of his chair, grabbed his meal, and sat down to eat alongside Chiyoh. The sun was rising pink in the sky, still relatively low on the eastern horizon. He dug in, hungry from running his emotional gauntlet. It certainly wasn't Hannibal's culinary artistry, but she was by no means a bad cook. At least he knew the sausage meat wasn't human. He wasn't sure whether that disappointed him or comforted him.

After they finished their food and Will cleaned and dried the dishes, Chiyoh gathered thin forceps and a pair of small scissors in preparation to remove his stitches. His stab wounds were healing nicely, and she had determined the sutures could come out that day. One less thing to worry about. It was a quick and painless affair, and he honestly could have done it himself, but the silent, clinical fussing that she did reminded him of Hannibal. Once the purple scars on his shoulder and cheek were given a look-over and determined they were sturdy enough, he re-buttoned his shirt and shrugged on the jacket. 

"Where to?" Chiyoh moved towards the controls.

"Annapolis." 

It was close enough, he figured. Besides, Jack might still be patrolling the nearby ports. It was Saturday morning, and if he docked in the city before noon, he would have plenty of time to prepare before his first stop in Baltimore the next day.

The boat jerked subtly forward as she accelerated towards his destination. Their wake left a glittering scar in the still, golden waters. The glow reflecting off the waves and the salty breeze in his hair reminded Will of other early mornings in the Atlantic. In a sense, he was headed to find Hannibal this time, too. 

* * *

Dr. Frederick Chilton lay in an acrylic hyperbaric chamber, wires and monitors and tubes poking out of his ruined body at all angles with almost wanton disregard. The pressurized flow of oxygen bothered his eardrums and rudely reminded him of his healthy days when he did normal things like fly on planes. The constant flow of intravenous hydration, medication cocktails, and painkillers did _nothing_ to lift his mood. 

He was fucking miserable. 

For good reason, too—he was unrecognizable and presented more like something from a feverish nightmare than a human being. His hair, once meticulously coiffed dark waves, was completely gone. The skin of his face and scalp was burned beyond belief and he rather resembled a cut of beef or pork, glazed and barbecued to perfection. His eyelids stuck together slightly but painfully with every blink, tacky with ointment and the never-ending seepage of blood-plasma from the futile attempts of his body to heal itself. His mouth was dry and drooling at the same time, his lips having been ripped from his face by the borrowed teeth of the Great Red Dragon. Swaths of cadaveric skin transplants honeycombed his raw arms, legs, and torso. 

But that wasn't the only reason he was miserable. He was equally miserable because the loathsome, maligning _sociopath_ who did this to him was missing after gallivanting around with Jack Crawford and Alana Bloom, who both looked past the monster he was in order to catch a killer. The killer was the instrument by which he ended up in this state, but not the cause. No, that _honor_ was reserved for _Will fucking_ _Graham._ He had heard of the untimely demise of Francis Dolarhyde and Dr. Lecter, but he was unable to rest easy until they found the third man. 

The heart rate monitor beeping as white noise in the background sounded a little faster as his pulse jumped in rage—and a _little_ bit of fear despite the generous amount of benzodiazepines he was on.

_Breathe, Frederick._

He glanced at the clock, distorted slightly through the curve of the chamber. _1:24 pm._ Eleven minutes until the nurse would arrive to prepare to wheel him up to his hydrotherapy appointment. It was one of the few highlights of his days as of late. The oblivion of the mild sedation was welcome, as were the warm jets of water that soothed his charred skin and allowed for a little more movement than he enjoyed otherwise. The human contact was nice, too. He didn't get many visitors.

The attractive ginger nurse entered his room right on schedule and vaguely reminded him of Freddie Lounds, though much more likable. She performed the usual steps she took to prepare him for the ride to the fourth floor. She transferred his IV bags to the pole on the gurney and attached the necessary monitors to the rails. 

"Afternoon, Louise," he lisped. "How's your day going?"

"Oh! Always so thoughtful, you—" the bubbly woman affected embarrassment, placing a manicured hand on her sternum. "Well—Rudy, you remember Rudy?" He nodded. "Well, he _finally_ asked me to get a coffee with him next Tuesday!"

"How magnificent!" 

God, he missed talking to people. 

"How're you feeling today Frederick?" She asked cheerfully, her dimpled grin softening her eyes as she pressed the button sequence that began the depressurization of the chamber.

"Can't complain." 

That was a lie. He had a lot to complain about, but there was no use in voicing his grievances after the first few times people had asked. No one ever wanted to hear the truth in that regard—it made them feel helpless, and people don't like feeling helpless. 

He clenched his jaw in an effort to pop the pressure bubbling in his ears, to no avail. Just his luck. 

The nurse kept about her activities, chattering about her plans for the coffee date the whole time, for about fifteen minutes while the pressure equalized, flushing tubes of this and that and recording various observations on her hospital-issued tablet. At 1:52, she opened the hatch behind his head, aligned the rails on the gurney with the ones under the mattress he lay on, and pulled him out of his acrylic coffin. 

The room smelled vaguely sterile and the air felt cooler on the patches of his skin which still had living thermoreceptors. As she began to move him to his destination, he closed his tender eyelids and focused on not screaming out at every bump and jostle of the irregularities in the speckled linoleum floors. He mentally counted the passing flashes of lights above his head through the thin skin of his eyelids as he was wheeled down the long hall to the elevator. _Fifteen._

He gritted his teeth, bracing for the rattle of the transition from the hallway to the elevator, but it didn't come right away. Maybe there was more elevator traffic than normal. His eyes flickered open to look ahead at the closed steel doors. Louise, the nurse, was nowhere in his limited view, and he was about to call out to her when the _ding_ announced the arrival of the elevator, and he was pushed past the sliding doors into the lift. Maybe she had said everything she had wanted to back in his room. The doors closed behind him and with a _click,_ a button was pushed.

He felt the quick change in elevation in his sinuses and his stomach.

 _"Basement level,"_ a pre-recorded voice sounded.

"Um, Lou—"

Her name got stuck in his throat as he saw a figure in powder blue scrubs, who was most definitely _not_ his nurse, come into view. Lithe fingers fussed with something near his IV bags. A man moved to the end of his bed, wheeling him out of the elevator onto the _very wrong floor_. Brunette curls peeked out from the bottom of a scrub cap, and eyes that matched the color of the scrubs flickered playfully from above a surgical mask. 

Terror and recognition simultaneously flashed behind his eyes as he faded into oblivion.

He awoke on a cold metal table with a bright fluorescent light shining in his eyes. The fixture above his head was clinical and typical of operating rooms, the ceiling tiles past it were dimpled and white, the same kind of ceiling tiles he stared at for hours on end through the acrylic of his chamber. He was still in the hospital, then. Good. Thick straps chafed against the tender skin on his torso, ankles, and wrists. Not good. 

He screamed as loud as he could. It was probably still the middle of the day and he knew harried medical staff scurried around the halls at all hours. Someone would hear him. 

When his throat was tiring and still no one came, he panicked. 

_Was he even in the same hospital?_ he dared to wonder. His senses lit up and the adrenaline in his veins forced him into high alert. He ended his calls for help and took in the sensory clues around him.

The room still smelled sterile and felt cool on his skin. That hadn't changed.

He couldn't hear his heart monitor, though.

All he heard was the faint hum of electricity and slow, crinkling footsteps. 

* * *

After exiting the elevator on the basement floor of The Johns Hopkins Hospital pushing a gurney holding one Dr. Frederick Chilton, Will Graham darted around a corner and covered his catch with the white hospital sheet. He smiled to himself under the chafing fabric of the medical mask. _So far, so good._ He made his way around more corners and down more halls and finally entered into the morgue with help from a stolen keycard from a nurse Louise Reynolds. She would be fine—the chloroform would wear off in a few minutes. The morgue attendants for this shift were conveniently on their lunch break, as planned. He had to be quick, though, as it was getting to the end of their allotted thirty minutes.

Whisking his way past stainless steel tables much like those he was familiar with in the labs at Quantico, Will headed for the loading bay, where a rented transport van was waiting.

He transferred the unconscious, burned man into a body bag on top of a metal folding gurney and loaded him with ease into the back of the van. He locked the wheels in place and closed the doors. 

After hopping into the driver's seat, he slipped on the sunglasses and navy ball cap he had waiting in the center console, and drove off. 

He made good time—it took just over an hour, even though he strictly abided by the traffic laws. He pulled into the employee lot at his old vet's office in Virginia at just past three in the afternoon. Seeing as it was a Sunday, the interior lights in the building were dark, and only the glowing neon "Animal Hospital" sign reflected a faint red onto the empty parking lot. 

Chilton was still out cold, so Will took his time changing into his maroon cashmere pullover and black dress slacks. After the laces on his oxfords were tied, he donned nitrile exam gloves and the clear vinyl murder suit. 

It was time. 

He hopped out of the driver's side and rounded to the back to unload.

As he wheeled the gurney with Dr. Chilton's unconscious body out of the van, he almost felt bad for doing this _here._ The vet—Nancy—was always kind to him and his seven dogs, not even judging him for having his own veritable zoo as other vets had in the past. Hell, she was even nice enough to let Will list her as his emergency contact for years. If she wasn't happily married with a lovely wife and two kids, it might have gone somewhere. He also hoped the brunette receptionist with doe-like, innocent eyes and a gentle smile wouldn't be the one to find Chilton on Monday, but needs must, and he had a message to send, after all.

He rolled his cargo to the back entrance and entered the building, having taken time to unlock the door and disable the alarm system earlier in the day. The fluorescent lights flickered on and he made his way past the empty kennels, down the hall, and through the swinging doors into the operating suite. 

The last time he had been back here was after Buster had been attacked by that fucker in the cave bear suit. He remembered being allowed to watch the operation through the grids of the safety glass window as they ligated veins and sutured furry skin until it was good as new. He shook the memory from his head and heaved Frederick from the body bag on the gurney to the slick steel of the operating table. Luckily for Will, the table was suited for rather large canine patients, so he fit onto it relatively well. 

He tied Chilton down with thick canvas straps and gathered all of the sharp metal surgical tools he could find onto the countertop.

Will waited a while for him to wake up.

The man eventually tore his scalded eyes open—and after realizing his restrained predicament, he screamed. A lot.

Will waited some more. He didn't want to do this alone if he didn't have to.

He was slumped in the corner out of Frederick's view, listening to the worthless wailing coming from the operating table. It was discordant music, but lovely all the same. He really shouldn't wait much longer to get started, but he was confident that Hannibal would stride through the swinging doors at any moment. 

And he did. Hannibal smoothed his hair and fiddled with the zipper at his neck as he elegantly sauntered over towards Will, looking impossibly dashing in his matching murder suit.

"My sincerest apologies for my tardiness, Will," he called over the banshee screaming. "I do abhor being late."

"Just glad you could make it," Will smiled, breathless as he pushed himself to his feet.

Hannibal came to lay a steady hand on his shoulder and placed a tender kiss onto his forehead. Will closed his eyes and savored the sensation. 

"So, _mylimasis_ , are you ready?" 

"I am now."

Will lifted his back from where he leaned on the wall and began to move behind the head of the operating table, still out of Frederick's sight, but not trying to dampen the sound of his footsteps.

The crying silenced. The whole room seemed to take a breath.

"Hello, Dr. Chilton," Will said his name with all the pleasantry of an old friend. 

"W-Will Graham. Speak of the devil. I was thinking about y-you but moments ago." 

He noticed the tremor in the other man's voice, and it invigorated him. This was going to be fun.

"Always one for flattery, weren't you Frederick?"

He rounded into Chilton's view slowly, dragging a gloved finger on the beige Formica countertop as he went, taunting. He watched an involuntary shiver run through the man's body and watched as he grimaced at the reminder of his binds.

"Mr. Graham—" he gulped, trying to grasp on to some sense of dignity but failing. "I can't help but notice you're here all on your lonesome. Whatever became of the good doctor?" Chilton sneered as much as he could. _Such a valiant effort._

"They didn't give you the news channel there?" Will threw an accusing glance at the helpless doctor. _He_ knew he wasn't alone, and that's all that mattered. Hannibal was right beside him, witness to his Becoming. 

As if warding off any tempt of distress or doubt, Hannibal laid a calming hand at the small of his back.

"Tut-tut Mr. Graham. Such a tragedy." He gloated. "Is that why you're here? Couldn't get your preferred fix of psychoanalysis so you came for the next best thing?"

Will scoffed. It was narcissistic but definitely characteristic of Chilton to take what he thought was a weak spot and insert himself into the situation to what he hoped was his benefit. After all, it was why he was on Will's list in the first place. The impudence to think he could provide a suitable substitute for the void Hannibal filled was overpowering. No doubt he was already thinking that Will's silence meant he was vulnerable in this regard. 

Will _was_ vulnerable, but not to the likes of Chilton.

"Tell me, how does that make you _feel_?" The burned man tried twisting his dull knife of psychoanalyzation deeper, to no effect.

"Cliché," Hannibal quipped, curling his lip up in disgust.

A reverberating low and menacing chuckle escaped through Will's lips and every muscle on the doctor's body tensed as if with electricity. 

Then, and much to the burned man's horror, Will advanced, eyes searing into him the whole way, and slammed his hands against the table beside his face with a violent echo.

"Oh, Frederick—" He hissed, condescendingly. "You don't realize why I'm actually here, do you?"

Will stared into Chilton's widening eyes as he clocked Hannibal beginning to prowl in a slow circle around the operating table.

"And...where is…here?"

"Never ask—it spoils the surprise."

The man took several ragged breaths as he waited and hoped that his question would be answered. It wasn't. 

"I figured I'd visit you first...out of mercy. Living like this," Will gestured at Frederick's raw skin, "can't be enjoyable."

"Yes, well, it was a freak accident, as you know. A _freak_ sicced his pet dragon on me." The seething, tittering words were barely discernible as English, seeing as though he was missing his lips. Shame.

"I'd apologize, but—"

"You'd be lying."

"Yes." 

Will pulled back and paced around the table, counter to Hannibal. He was reminded of their fight with Dolarhyde and the predatorial way they stalked then too.

"I had other ideas for you, you know, but none that would really be as...meaningful to you or Jack." He stopped at the end of the table and unscrewed a nearby IV pole from its base, hefting it in his gloved hands. "You're familiar with this one, right?"

Will watched an exuberant Hannibal smirk. He winked back in reply.

"N-NO—"

He gritted his teeth as he thrust the pole in at a shallow angle, and delighted as it entered and exited through Chilton's abdomen with relative ease despite the bluntness of the piercing end. Droplets of warm blood spattered on his suit and he watched the nauseated loll of Frederick's eyes in their sockets with satisfaction.

He was right—this _was_ fun.

"How should we prepare him for dinner, babe?" Will breathed, rolling his healing shoulder.

"How about kebabs? I know an _excellent_ recipe." Hannibal handed him a long pair of forceps.

"I can't believe no one ever caught on to how lame your sense of humor was." 

He took the forceps, brought a gloved hand to his chin in momentary contemplation, and then drove the metal into the meat of Frederick's thigh, taking care to miss the femoral artery. He didn't want this to be over too quickly. Chilton's scream gurgled in his throat and echoed through the room.

Osteotomes and trocars and scissors and scalpels made their way into biceps and deltoids and calves and thighs as piercing shrieks and groans echoed about the clinical room. 

"Will... _please—_ " his desperate high-pitched cry choked out as Will grabbed a long metal suction tube from the counter. 

Will placed the tube down. "Oh, well why didn't you say so before?" He palmed a scalpel as he turned to face the bleeding man. "Hannibal and I are nothing if not courteous. It would be _rude_ to ignore social niceties at a time such as this."

"D-Dr. Lecter is _d-dead_."

"Is he, now?" He advanced towards the operating table and glanced back at his companion. Hannibal gave a feline smile. "He's here with me all the same."

Chilton's panicked chuckle quickly caught in his throat as Will twirled the scalpel in his hand.

"N—"

Will loomed over the man and with a steady grip, placed the cold metal blade to Frederick's collarbone.

"You know," he pressed harder and blood beaded at the touch. "There's an old hunting tradition..."

The knife sliced deeper, through layers of charred skin and fat, as it began to move towards his breastbone. Will amusedly glanced up into terrified eyes as Chilton wailed in agony.

"It's typically reserved for deer and the like," Will picked up the scalpel and started another incision at the other side of the man's collarbone, dragging down to meet the other cut at the sternum. "When you make your first kill," he turned the knife to make a straight cut from breastbone to navel, "—you typically would—" he finished the Y-incision and stepped back to take in the sight of fresh blood painting the body before him. He noticed that Chilton was close to passing out by the droop in his eyes. That wouldn't do. 

Will took a bloodied hand and gently slapped the side of the bobbing face. "Pay attention, doctor."

"W—" he moaned as his eyes fluttered.

"Better. Anyway, as I was saying," he moved in and began to reflect the muscles away from the ribs underneath. "With a first kill, it's tradition to take a bite from the heart of your prey," a flick of the knife, exposing the white gleam of bone, Frederick's weakening shrieks of terror. "Raw." 

Will made brief eye contact, and he thrilled at the intimacy rushing between them as he fell into glimmering pupils that had accepted their fate. His own eyes welled up—not in sadness, or remorse. His brimming tears sparkled with awe and reverence for the artistic tableau _he_ was creating. It was more resplendent and striking than any macabre work by Goya or Géricault. 

A doting hand clamped his shoulder and a whispered word rang in his ear, "See?"

" _Yes._ "

After a sacramental pause, chest heaving, and blood glinting off the blade in his hand, he grabbed the bone shears and began to crunch his way through the stuttering ribs of the dying doctor. To his credit, Chilton was clinging to life a lot longer than Will had anticipated. Wet burbles choked from the mouth of the man who once wielded his voice to pontificate and peacock with no self-awareness or shame for how much of a vainglorious _asshole_ he was. 

He kept hacking his way through the man, his own heartbeat steady and slow in his chest.

When Will made it through to the gleaming organs in Frederick's thoracic cavity, he was just in time to watch the last breath escape his lungs and the last heartbeat ripple through his pericardium. 

And just like that, Dr. Frederick Chilton was dead.

"Beautiful." Hannibal's obeisant regard made a blush creep across Will's cheeks.

With aid of the scalpel, he tore the stilled heart from the bleeding cavity and brought it to his lips. He turned on his heel to face Hannibal, gazed into his dark, flashing irises, and took a generous bite. Intimate didn't even begin to cover the gaze they shared. It was downright _erotic_. Warm blood spilled past his full lips and gushed into his mouth and down his chin. It was coppery and sweet. The sinewy muscle split under his sharp teeth as he chewed, lips curling in carnal delight. He swallowed as a rivulet of blood made its way down his throat and across his bobbing Adam's apple. 

Will had done this—this was _his_ design.

Hannibal licked his lips in mimicry and lust.

The fire raged anew.

* * *

Brian Zeller trudged through the door of his Virginia apartment at approximately three a.m. on Monday morning. It had been another late night at the Quantico lab. Jack was on his ass lately with the Dolarhyde autopsy. 

_"Are you sure Will was involved in this?"_

Brian was a lot of things, but he wasn't stupid. The evidence _clearly_ pointed to Will's participation. Not just the physical evidence, either. Jesus—that guy had been out of his mind since he tore his way into this world naked and screaming. Zeller was one of the first at the FBI to see it, too. Though he had once regretted gossiping to Freddie Lounds about him, he held no such reservations now. In hindsight, he wished he did _more_ to dissuade Jack from keeping Graham on the team. Catching killers was only worth something if you didn't turn into one of them in the end. Nietzche said something like that, he thought.

He toed off his black ankle boots at the door as he locked the deadbolt and flung the shoes unceremoniously in the general direction of his shoe rack. His bag dropped from his shoulder and he let it stay where it fell. He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on the coat rack. 

Maybe Will was always a killer, though. Even with empathy, there's no way he could _become_ something he wasn't, deep down. That just didn't make sense. It had to be that he could think like a killer because he _was_ one. 

He made his way down the hall to his bedroom, rubbing at his bleary eyes and groaning at the ridiculousness of it all. Joining the FBI had been his dream since he was a kid, but _fuck_ if it wasn't stressful. He undid the holster from his belt and locked his Glock in the small safe by his bed. His sister and her kids were coming over that evening since it was his day off, and he didn't want to take any chances of headlining the news with his carelessness.

He tried to separate his thoughts of work from his mind, but couldn't. They still hadn't found Graham's body, and that fact alone had Jack—and everyone else—on edge. As much as he was relieved to not have to perform an autopsy on another former colleague, without a body there was no guarantee that he wasn't somewhere out there on a murdering spree. Maybe he finally snapped and that's why he helped Lecter kill Dolarhyde. Who knows.

He rounded the corner to his kitchen, scratching his stubbled cheek, thinking of the chilled craft IPA he had waiting for him. CSI was having a marathon and he liked to poke fun at the inaccuracies while under the influence. He should probably eat something too—he had been made to work through dinner. His stomach rumbled in agreement.

"Hiya, Zee." 

His eyes snapped up, pulse racing, hand reaching for his gun. 

_Shit._

Will Graham was sitting in the dark at his kitchen counter, fork and knife in hand as he ate kebabs from a takeout container.

So...not dead then. _Fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 
> 
> Apologies for the irregular upload schedule—I'm working to find my balance!
> 
> EDIT: the next chapter is delayed (probably a week?) while I recover from a medical emergency.


	4. To The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh! So sorry this took forever to come out. I was recovering from a nasty infection. All is well now!
> 
> CW: Graphic descriptions of gore, violence, and medical procedures. Also low-key alcoholism.

_"So say goodbye to the vows you take_

_And say goodbye to the life you make_

_And say goodbye to the heart you break_

_And all the cyanide you drank."_

-My Chemical Romance, "To the End"

* * *

There was no mistaking it now. 

Whatever mix of naïve hope and doubt lingered in Jack's mind was shattered when he walked onto the fresh crime scene in Virginia.

He got the call at eight that morning and didn't even have to know more than the description of the scene before he suspected exactly who had committed the murder. A Wound Man kill, in a vet's office? It was pretty obvious. The fact that it was Chilton, and that the vet was within a five-mile radius of Will Graham's old house in Wolf Trap made it more than clear. 

What wasn't clear, though, was _why_ Will had done it.

Even less clear was why Jack had to leave the scene behind in search of a grounding breath and an antacid. Having been privy to gory scenes like these for decades, he thought his stomach was past the point of being upset. Like so many other things in the recent past, he was wrong. 

He needed help. He knew he struggled to keep perspective when it came to Will Graham, so he dialed a familiar number.

"Jack," Alana Bloom's voice greeted, tinny from the speaker of his phone.

"Bloom. We, uh—" a heavy sigh escaped his lips. "He's alive."

"How? Where? Is he okay?" 

"Alana, he—"

"Oh, God, Jack! Just tell me!"

"We...we found the body of Dr. Chilton." The line went radio silent. "It was Will."

"Jack—" Her voice was tremulous and pleading. 

"Are you coming? I need your help." 

Jack heard a brief and muffled argument on the other side of the line. 

"Yeah," she relented.

He hung up the phone without saying goodbye and jammed his hands into the deep, warm pockets of his woolen coat. He squinted into the morning sun as he made his way back into the animal hospital.

Jack exhaled a frustrated breath and donned the pair of latex gloves from his pocket. Striding to the entrance with newfound determination flashing in his eyes, he flung the door open and reentered the building. 

Passing the myriad of crime scene analysts in navy and yellow FBI windbreakers swabbing and dusting and photographing the hallways, he made his way back to the operating room, where Jimmy Price and several other agents were performing similar activities. 

"Hey, Jack," Price called from the far corner of the room, squinting at the mutilation before him. "I tried Brian again—"

"And?"

"He didn't pick up. It's not like him—even on his day off."

"You're right." Jack cursed under his breath. "Okay, I'll send some uniforms by."

He stepped into the crowded hallway again and pointed to the balding agent nearby. "Miller, go take Sanchez and run by Brian Zeller's place for a welfare check."

The man nodded and went off to find his partner. Jack returned to the room with Chilton's body and tried to stuff his burgeoning anxiety to the back of his mind. He was practiced at compartmentalizing his emotions, but he'd be lying to think he wasn't a little shaken. 

Back in the presence of the mangled corpse, and now that the initial shock of finding Dr. Chilton in this manner was gone, Jack had a moment to process the extent of the horror that lay before him. The thing he had noticed upon first glance, even before identifying the victim, was that blood was everywhere. A variety of different pools and spatters and smears stained nearly every surface in the room. This was not the manner of obsessive tidiness that the Ripper scenes were left in. It almost would have been easier if it was. To think that Will was just so far in Hannibal's head that he lost himself. 

But this—this reflected an element of the carnal indulgence that mirrored the Dolarhyde scene. Despite the clear portrait of hedonism this new murder painted, it would be remiss to ignore that every cut and stab was deliberate; controlled. Purposeful. 

The cold, stiff body lay in a pool of dark, coagulated blood atop a stainless steel surgical table. Over a dozen surgical instruments of various sizes pierced into his burned skin and through his extremities and torso. There was even half an IV pole thrown in there. It was all very reminiscent of Hannibal's two Wound Man murders with a dash of Abel Gideon's thrown in for spice. Unique to this scene, though, was a deep Y-incision spanning the man's torso, stitched shut by what appeared to be fishing line. Graham clearly wasn't going for subtlety here. Jack desperately wanted to know what lay beyond, but that would have to wait for the autopsy.

"At least he did some of the work for me," Price joked as he nodded towards the cut. 

"Finish up and meet me back at the lab."

Jack left the scene and took a deep breath as he exited the building, heading to his black SUV. The serenity of the sunlight filtering through the leaves of the nearby trees and the chirping of nesting birds was a cruel juxtaposition to the carnage held within the brick walls of the clinic. He ran his hands over his eyes in an attempt to stave off the headache he knew was fast approaching. What he wouldn't give for a drink.

As he looked up towards his destination, he caught a flash of red hair darting past crime scene tape and towards a maroon Jeep in the parking lot, camera in hand. Of course.

"Miss Lounds," he boomed. 

The petite figure turned and flashed a fox-like grin. "Agent Crawford."

"I should arrest you for obstruction."

"Good to see you too," she turned and opened her car door. 

"Not so fast—" 

"It's Will Graham, isn't it?" She whipped her fire-haloed head around. Jack could respect her bluntness.

"Lounds—"

"I warned you, Jack. I warned all of you and nobody listened. You know I have to do this, and you know it's the right thing to let me."

Her lips upturned into a subtle smirk and she got in her car, locking the door behind her. She sped off without so much as a goodbye, and Jack almost regretted letting her go. But he knew she was right. 

After what he had just witnessed, he wasn't sure who Will Graham was now, and wasn't sure if he ever really knew in the first place.

* * *

Will smiled as he took another bite of the Mediterranean spiced kebab he made. It wasn't anywhere close to what Hannibal could have done with the sinuous heart he gathered, but it was satisfying nonetheless. The spicy warmth of coriander and cumin was undercut by a faint note of citrus acidity—this meat was indeed bitter about being dead. 

He didn't have much more time to savor the meal though, because Brian Zeller had just walked into his kitchen, in which Will had made himself an unwelcome guest. The lights flipped on and his host startled as though seeing a ghost...which Will supposed was fitting.

"Hiya, Zee," he announced as he swallowed his bite.

As hoped, Zeller was unarmed and very, very startled.

In a flash, Will vaulted over the tiled counter towards him, greasy steak knife in hand, ready to give chase as the man turned to run down the hall. 

He could have done this in a different, far more efficient way as he had with Dr. Chilton, but Will wanted to feel the adrenaline pounding through his veins and alighting his every nerve. The thrill of inflicting a little bit of psychological stress on the man who never gave him a fucking break was undeniably appealing.

It was a short race to the bedroom, where he kicked a cell phone out of Brian's fidgeting hands to smash against the opposite wall. The man yelped.

"I just want to talk," Will placated. His hands raised in surrender as he limply held onto the knife he still had.

"Bullshit," Zeller rubbed his hand as he backed away from Will. 

"If I wanted you dead, I could have done it by now."

"Drop the knife then."

Will's eyes darted to the bedside safe he had found, noticed it was still closed, and then to the holster which lay empty on the bed. _Fair enough_. He didn't really need it anyway, and visibly leveling the playing field was a quick way to gain trust. He tossed the knife haphazardly onto the floor and kicked it under the bed. 

Brian's shoulders relaxed and Will saw in his eyes the moment his defenses dropped. He lunged forward, and knocked Zeller flat on the floor, using this distraction to his advantage. Pressing all his weight onto the man's throat with his forearm, Will reached into his back pocket and retrieved the syringe of ketamine. He flicked the cap off of the needle as he struggled to keep his grip against the clawing at his arm and the kicking at his back. He brought it to Zeller's neck and pushed the plunger, injecting the drug into the top of his trapezius.

The thrashing man beneath him managed to buck him off and rise to his feet before he could inject more than a couple milliliters, leaving about a third of the liquid in the tube. Will rose to his feet with a feral grin on his face. Even without the full dose, his prey would become impaired enough within a couple of minutes.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Brian was screaming and clutching at the base of his neck as he darted out of the room. 

Will began to stalk down the hall and he heard a metallic clattering sound from his destination. Syringe in hand, he peeked through the archway into the kitchen, and saw a paling and shaking Zeller clutching a large chef's knife in his hand. Will could tell the man was beginning to feel the effect of the drugs by the slight droop in his eyes, and so he stepped into the kitchen.

To his credit, Brian took a few lurching steps forward and brought the blade to Will's throat. "Get the _fuck_ out of my house," he slurred. 

Will reached his hand up to the one holding the knife at his throat. He grabbed the other man's wrist to steady it and leaned forward into the cut of the blade. A small bead of blood began to spring from the shallow wound on his neck. 

"Or what?" He sneered.

"Will," a hand clamped down on his shoulder from behind and Will stiffened momentarily before he realized who it was.

Will released his grip on Brian's wrist and leaned back into the touch at his back. "'Bout time you showed up." A kiss was nuzzled into his curls. 

"Wh-" Zeller's heavy-blinking eyes scanned the room for any sign of to whom he was referring. He found nothing. "O-oh my God—you've actually lost it!" He cackled through a daze. The hand holding the knife was losing its battle for control as his arm fell helpless at his side.

"On the contrary," Hannibal assured.

Will took the chance to inject the rest of the ketamine as Brian slumped to the floor. 

After the man passed into unconsciousness, Will hogtied him and covered his mouth with a thick layer of duct tape. He injected him with a longer-acting sedative before moving him. They had a car ride ahead of them. Despite his injured shoulder, he carried the body with ease and dropped it into the trunk of his rented sedan. It was lucky that it was a short walk from the first-floor apartment to his parking space. He closed the trunk hatch and went to close the door of Zeller's apartment. He left the inside as it was, not bothering to clean up after himself. It didn't matter—they would know it was him anyway and he wasn't trying to hide any more than necessary. 

Will climbed into the driver's seat, looked at Hannibal, already seatbelted into the passenger's seat, and smiled. He backed out of the parking lot and left on his route to the secondary location he had picked out.

It was serene. They drove in silence for half an hour before Will's thoughts began to race.

He could imagine what could have been if things played out differently. If he had run away with Hannibal almost four years ago instead of bleeding out on his kitchen floor next to Abigail. If he had convinced him of his feelings while they were in Florence. If he hadn't rejected him after their escape from the Verger estate. If they never went to the cliffside house and just ran instead. Maybe they would have ended up in France, or Argentina, or Cuba. 

He sighed.

"Did you ever wonder what our life together would have been like?" Will played with the chain around his neck that held the safety deposit box key, his other hand on the steering wheel. 

"What do you think?" Hannibal replied as he always did when Will asked questions he already knew the answer to.

"What did you dream for us?"

"I imagined something not too dissimilar to what we are doing now, though with a lesser degree of recklessness." Hannibal glanced out the window. "I would have liked to show you Europe."

"You wanted us to be murder husbands? Freddie was right all along," Will chuckled. 

"You terrible thing." He flashed a crooked grin.

"Eat me."

"Be careful what you wish for."

Shadows of trees whizzed past as they sped down the dark road. They laughed and traded terrible cannibal puns back and forth until Will's revelry devolved into tears. A soft hand wiped a droplet from his cheek and smoothed the hair at his forehead. 

He had to pull over. 

"I miss you," he choked between gasps of air as the tears began to flow in earnest. 

Once the car came to an idle on the side of the deserted road, he leaned his forehead against the steering wheel and sobbed. His ragged breathing became more erratic as he fought the temptation to retreat into his mind. The ache in his heart was nigh unbearable, and he yearned for something, _anything_ , to fill the void and make him whole again.

" _'_ _The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels of pleasure and of pain,'_ " Hannibal cooed, caressing the curls at Will's nape. "This is but part of your Becoming, Will."

He sniffled as he lifted his head to stare into Hannibal's warm eyes. "Did you really just quote Dante to me while I'm having a panic attack?" Will smiled wryly. "You're fucking insufferable."

"Couldn't be helped, I'm afraid," Hannibal placed a hand under Will's stubbled jaw and turned his face to him. He cupped his cheeks, wiping away the streaks of tears with his thumbs.

Will caught his breath, eyes fluttering under the comforting, grounding touch, and leaned in until their foreheads were touching. "I love you more than you know."

Their lips met in a gentle kiss and Will leaned over the center console to close the distance even further. He felt strong arms wrap around his shoulders, and he pulled his lips from the kiss to cozy his face into the crook of Hannibal's neck. He smelled vaguely of vetiver and sandalwood. 

"And I love you," Hannibal purred as Will pressed his lips into his neck. They stayed in the embrace for a few minutes longer as Will worked to steady his breathing and heart rate. 

After he was thoroughly soothed, Will pulled away to resume driving. The rest of the trip went smoothly, with Will holding Hannibal's hand over the gear shift of the rental car. His catch still slept soundly in the trunk, bound and gagged. They reached their destination just as the sun peeked past the horizon.

By the time Zeller had woken up, Will already had him strapped securely to an armed wooden chair in the dusty room. 

A muffled groan echoed around the barren space, the sound of a man regaining consciousness only to find his mouth was covered. 

Hannibal was suavely leaning against an old, weathered table, content to be a casual observer of the situation. Will was sitting on the table beside him, resting his head on Hannibal's bicep. When he heard the man coming to, he slid to his feet, placed a quick peck on Hannibal's cheek, and walked over. 

He held his hands up, inching towards the now-struggling man in the chair the way one would a frightened animal. Fear had burned whatever drug-induced haze remained out of Zeller's eyes, and Will saw the pulse jump in his throat as he began to fight his binds.

Will crouched at his ear and spoke slowly. "I really _do_ just want to talk."

A muffled grunt grew into a short yelp as he ripped the duct tape unceremoniously from the man's mouth. 

"Bull _shit,_ " Brian spat onto the ground and stretched his neck. 

"I want you to tell me everything you know about Hannibal Lecter's death."

Will slowly rounded back to stand before his captive, his gaze meeting defiant, blue-grey eyes.

"Oh, so you _do_ know you're hallucinating. I don't know if that's too comforting to me."

Will sauntered over to Hannibal, who handed over the Montblanc fountain pen from the breast pocket of his navy and violet tartan suit coat. 

"Just tell me. I don't want to hurt you more than I have to."

"Wow, a pen, I'm _so_ scared," he emphasized with a wiggle of his bound hands. "I'm not telling you shit."

"It's pretty amazing—the amount of pain you can inflict with something so simple." Will stepped back to the chair and placed a hand on the restraint at the man's left wrist. He took the pen and placed it horizontally over the cuticle of Zeller's pointer finger. Then he pressed down. _Hard_. 

He kept pressure on the pen and watched the vein on the man's forehead bulging as his face flushed in pain. Nothing more than a low groan passed his pursed lips. Will hadn't expected it to prove anything more than his determination for answers, and so he wasn't frustrated.

He released the pressure on his cuticle and moved the pen instead to slowly stab the brass nib into the soft tissue under the nail of his pointer finger. That elicited a louder response. 

"Tell me." He dug deeper.

"C-Cause of death was a GSW to the head!" Zeller finally cried out.

"I was there for that bit," Will bit his bottom lip and pulled out the now bloody pen tip. "Who was it?" 

" _Christ_ , Graham," the man said through a shaky, grounding exhale. Blood was starting to drip from the wound in his fingertip, turning the nail black. "Why do you care?"

"Wrong answer." Will held Zeller's hand steady as he dug the nib under the nail of the middle finger. 

The screaming started again from behind gritted teeth. The man wasn't as forthcoming with this answer, and so Will moved on to the ring finger, and then the pinky, and thumb, when that proved fruitless.

"You're running out of fingers," Zeller let out a gravelly chuckle once his mind had numbed to that brand of pain.

"So I am." He removed the pen and took a step back to contemplate. It wasn't hard to decide what to do next.

With all his strength, Will lunged forward and stabbed the pen through the back of the man's left hand, only stopping when the wood of the chair arm below forced him to. 

"Who. Was. It."

"JESUSSSS!" his cries were blood-curdling.

"Not quite," Hannibal quipped, inspecting his own cuticles as Will yanked the pen out from the bleeding hole in the man's hand. 

"TELL ME!" Will made to stab at the right hand now.

"OK...OK!!!" Zeller screamed just before the nib pierced his flesh again. "It was one of—of ours!"

He froze and scanned the teary eyes in front of him, auguring the truth. The man wasn't lying. 

"It…" he gulped. "It was a sniper on the roof, the bullet I found was the standard-issue .380."

Will had suspected it was the FBI, of course, but he had needed confirmation. "You're sure?" His voice was lower and pointed, making plain his rage. He pressed the tip of the pen into the skin on the back of the man's right hand, threatening.

"I swear to God that's all I know, you crazy motherf—" his sentence was cut off as Will replaced the duct tape over his mouth and stepped back, discarding the bloody pen on the ground.

"Well, Brian, thanks for your cooperation. It's been a pleasure." 

Will pulled a folding knife from his pocket and flicked it open, smiling pleasantly at the fearful widening of the other man's eyes.

* * *

"You know, Jack, I really hate to do this without Zee here." Jimmy Price stood over the corpse of Frederick Chilton, stiff on the sleek examination table of the Quantico morgue. The surgical instruments of torture previously porcupining from the man had already been extricated from their places and categorized in preparation for further analysis. 

"There's nothing to be done about that until Miller reports back. Please—" Jack gesticulated at the body. 

With a sigh, Price donned a clear splash guard over his face and snapped on long nitrile gloves past the sleeves of his white protective jumpsuit. He grabbed tweezers and a small pair of scissors from his tray of tools and began to undo the stitching, taking care to place the bits of fishing line into an evidence bag.

Once the stitches were removed, Jimmy grabbed a scalpel. "He didn't cut down as far as we usually do for an autopsy."

"Does that mean anything?" Jack postulated.

"Hell if I know yet."

He cut from where Will's Y-incision ended at the navel down to the public bone and began to reflect the skin and muscle back from the area. He immediately noticed the cuts to Chilton's chest plate. The ribs were slightly misaligned. "Jesus, it's like putting the top back on the Jack-o-Lantern after you scoop the seeds out."

Jack sent a stern look in response. 

Price moved a mounted magnifying glass to the examination area. He inspected the edges of the cuts to the chest plate. 

"I'll have to wait to get it under the microscope to be sure, but it sure looks like his ribs were removed while he was still alive."

"Jesus."

"Mercifully, he would have died pretty quick after that. A mixture of shock, exposure, and blood loss is my best guess so far."

He moved the magnifying glass out of the way and gently lifted off the mass of bone and cartilage, exposing the chest cavity and a gaping fist-sized hole between the lungs.

Jack leaned in closer, incredulous. "He took his heart?" 

Price took in a deep breath. "Pretty soon after death, too. There's a lot of blood in the space," he pointed at the puddle of coagulated fluid. "Do you think he—" 

Both men avoided eye contact and left the implied _"ate it"_ hanging silent and heavy in the air. He really didn't want to believe that Will would go so far as that. Then again, he didn't want to believe Will had survived only to subsequently brutally murder Dr. Chilton, either.

"Why would he take his heart?" Jack wondered.

"Because you took his." A voice sounded from behind them. 

Alana Bloom was leaning in the doorway, looking impossibly sharp in her emerald green pinstripe suit. Her heels clicked on the floor as she made her way into the room. A stern, bald man in a dark suit entered behind her but stayed against the wall, crossing his arms.

"My bodyguard. He was cleared with security. Please, continue."

Jack only nodded in greeting. "My part is just about done. What do you mean we 'took his heart?'" 

"I'm referring to Hannibal's death at the hands of the FBI. Surely you had to realize that Will's relationship with him bordered on... _partnership_...in more than one regard." She cleared her throat before continuing. "Reading the report you sent about the cliff house crime scene and his postmortem only confirmed my suspicions."

It was true. They had found evidence of sexual contact between the two inside the house and inside Hannibal Lecter himself. Jack really didn't want to think about it. As of recently, it was the main thing he drank to forget.

Speaking of drinking, he really wanted to get back to the bottle of single-malt he had sitting in his desk. "Let's take this to my office," he directed at Alana. "Jimmy, finish up here and let me know when the report is ready."

"You got it, boss!"

Jack, Alana, and her bodyguard left the room and headed down the long marble hallway. Pushing the glass door to his office open and holding it for the others as they entered, Jack loosened the tie around his neck and unbuttoned his suit coat.

"So it's revenge? Why Chilton?" He headed towards the leather chair behind his desk.

"He needed to send a message. Who better to deliver it than the man he left half-dead only a few weeks before?"

Jack nodded like it made sense and sat as he unlocked the drawer holding his secret bar. He pulled out two glasses and a decanter of scotch and poured a finger in each. He slid the other tumbler across the desk to Alana.

"Thanks."

He took a swig from his glass and relished the burn in his throat as he swallowed. "How could I have been so blind? Where did I go wrong with him?"

"I won't deny, you pushed him, Jack." She took a sip, her lipstick staining the edge of the glass red. " _We_ pushed him."

" _'If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.'_ I made him look, Alana." 

"You're not to blame. There's no one but Hannibal and Will himself to blame."

He didn't feel comforted. He felt guilty. He felt guilty for not recognizing who Lecter was, especially since he headed the Behavioral Analysis Unit, for fuck's sake. He felt guilty for introducing Will to Hannibal. For all but forcing them to spend time together. For making Will look, again and again and again. For letting himself believe that Will wasn't behind the escape that led to the cliffside house. For hoping he survived the fall. For now wishing he didn't.

He shot the rest of the liquid down and poured himself another finger.

"Jack, you—"

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in," Jack boomed.

A bright-eyed intern entered, arms full of letters and a long package. "Just the mail! I'll leave it over here, sir." 

He grunted in thanks. The intern placed the items on the side table and scurried out as fast as she had entered. Jack rose to his feet and went to grab the mail to open at his desk. 

"Jack, you can't hold yourself responsible for knowledge you didn't have." Alana tracked his movement with keen blue eyes.

"I can when it's my job to know things." He returned and set the envelopes in his intake box and his glass on the desk. The package was placed front and center as he pulled out a folding pocket knife. 

"It's not healthy."

He didn't bother replying, because he didn't really care about what healthy or unhealthy behaviors he partook in these days. He was all but alone in the world and he knew his days at the FBI were numbered. Instead, he cut open the tape holding the box shut and peered inside as he took another sip of scotch.

He choked on it.

Inside the box was a severed human arm.

They weren't given much time to react when Jack's phone started ringing.

"Crawford," he rasped.

"Agent Miller, sir. We found Zeller's apartment unlocked and nobody was inside. There's evidence of a struggle. I've set up a perimeter. Should I tell the team to expect you?"

"I'm on my way," Jack barely hung up before he downed the rest of his drink and sprang to his feet.

He prayed to God that his gut instinct was wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case any of you are as nerdy as I am, I referenced the John Ciardi translation for Dante's Inferno.
> 
> Also, I am not a doctor. If I fucked up my research and got the autopsy scene gratuitously wrong, please correct me!


	5. You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us In Prison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit longer than normal!
> 
> CW: Self harm and like, sooo much angst.
> 
> (Enjoy the Easter eggs if you can find them!)

_“Too much, too late,_

_Or just not enough of this_

_Pain in my heart for your dying wish_

_I'll kiss your lips, again.”_

-My Chemical Romance, “You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us In Prison”

* * *

> **EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: Chesapeake Ripper Risen from the Dead?**
> 
> The world thought it had seen the last of the Chesapeake Ripper when Dr. Hannibal Lecter was found dead following his prison escape and subsequent altercation with The Tooth Fairy, Francis Dolarhyde, but lurking behind the doors of a humble veterinary clinic lay the sinister suggestion that someone else has taken up the reins. Dr. Frederick Chilton, the best-selling author of "Hannibal the Cannibal" **([LINK](https://twitter.com/that_goth_bitch))** and former administrator at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, was found brutally murdered in Vienna, Virginia early Monday morning.
> 
> Some of you may remember the gruesome killing of Jeremy Olmstead, the eighth known victim of the Chesapeake Ripper. Olmstead was found dead in his Massachussets garage, impaled throughout with dozens of tools from a nearby workbench. FBI insight has associated the inspiration for this "style" of murder with a medieval drawing titled "The Wound Man" ([LINK](https://miro.medium.com/max/1600/0*BWFCk9mw-Nw_rM_A.jpg)). This type of murder was found twice more in recent years, both times associated again with the Chesapeake Ripper. Imagine the FBI's surprise when they found Dr. Frederick Chilton heinously killed in the same manner.
> 
> With the psychopathic monster that was the Chesapeake Ripper, Hannibal the Cannibal, definitively dead, who then, committed this horrific murder?
> 
> Readers, I suggest to you that none other than the missing former FBI profiler and known associate of Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham, is the culprit. Insider sources have confirmed that the veterinary clinic where Dr. Chilton's mutilated body was discovered is home to the vet who attended to Graham's many dogs when he lived in nearby Wolf Trap, VA. 
> 
> I have previously reported on the unorthodox and unethical work Graham provided to the FBI ([LINK ](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/hannibal/images/8/89/Article1.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20130529214835) & [ LINK](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/hannibal/images/2/26/HannibalS01E03-1053.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130529224050)), where it was said that he could determine what type of killer committed a murder by using his "empathy disorder" to inhabit their minds. It could be wondered, then, if he got so far into Hannibal the Cannibal's mind that he never got out. 
> 
> I propose to you a different idea entirely: Will Graham has always been a psychopathic killer lurking in the shadows, waiting for his time to strike. As I reported last week ([LINK](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBvr2AYBBiA-Qaeo4jViamAbRo0h7PO0p)), evidence from the cliffside scene that found The Tooth Fairy and Hannibal the Cannibal dead suggests that Graham and Lecter were _much_ closer than mere associates. This reporter believes Graham helped to orchestrate Lecter’s breakout from federal custody so they could be reunited and slip away onto a fairy-tale murder honeymoon, never to be seen again. With their escape thwarted by the FBI, it only makes sense for Graham to lash out the only way a psychopath knows how—violently—and what a shame it is that poor Dr. Frederick Chilton was the one to pay the price.
> 
> How could Jack Crawford and others at the FBI have let such a murderer into their ranks? Is Will Graham killing now to avenge his lost love? And if so, who is next on his list? 
> 
> Stay tuned for more.
> 
> _**TattleCrime is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.**_

"Well, she's certainly observant..." Will muttered to himself, closing the lid of his laptop, "among other things."

He was sitting in an old beige recliner in the basement studio apartment he had rented for the day. The older woman letting the space lived in the house upstairs but was losing her hearing and accepted the wads of cash Will threw at her with a wide grin. He could tell she would keep her mouth shut even if she suspected anything, and on the off chance she didn't, it wouldn't be too hard to take care of her. The space wasn't nice by any standard, but he didn't care. It had all he needed: privacy, a clean enough bed, a hot shower, and a small but well-stocked kitchen. 

The smell of his cooking dinner wafted into the air from the pot on the tiny stove. After rising from his seat and taking a swig from the half-empty bottle of whiskey he had set on the nightstand, he moved into the small kitchen, grabbed the wooden spoon from the counter, and took off the lid covering the simmering food. Steam rose and dampened his face as he leaned in to stir the mixture of collard greens, spices, onions, broth, and meat. It was a variation on one of his favorite dishes from childhood. Instead of the traditional ham hocks, though, he had opted to use a different kind of meat. The opportunity had presented itself, after all, though it was a shame he didn't have the time or means to smoke the meat for better flavor.

He scooped up a wilted leaf on the spoon and blew on it a few times to cool it before bringing it to his mouth to test the texture. Satisfied that it was cooked through, he turned the burner off and replaced the lid. The timer on the oven dinged a few seconds later and Will removed a skillet of golden brown cornbread from it, setting it on a trivet to cool momentarily on the counter. His movements were like a dance, though not quite as fluid as the svelte grace with which Hannibal flitted about his old kitchen. 

Will had always been able to feed himself—the result of an often absent father during childhood—but he had really delved into the skill after his release from the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He had itched for something to do with his time, something relaxing and mind-numbing that didn't make him think about murder. Except that was the problem—cooking only made him feel closer to Hannibal and to the lurking beast they were unleashing together. Maybe that's why he kept cooking after Hannibal was locked up. He cooked for himself, the dogs, and eventually for Molly and Walter. He had missed Hannibal and who he was when they were with one another. Cooking became a solace to him during those long years, and even more so now that his meals were in tribute to his Becoming.

A sliver of his midriff was exposed to the cool air as he stretched to retrieve a plate from the cabinet, and he smiled longingly to himself, thinking of how dark and primal Hannibal's gaze would have looked. He served himself a moderate portion of the collards and steaming cornbread and sat in the rickety barstool at the counter to eat. Will was silent except for the faint clinks of silverware on the ceramic plate. The food was good and the pieces of shredded meat mingling with the vegetables were tender and savory. It was less bitter than Chilton. 

He closed his eyes and sighed.

When he opened them, he was sitting across from Hannibal in the navy Baltimore dining room, complete with the herb wall and painting of _Leda and the Swan_ hanging pretentiously above the fireplace mantle. The fine china and gleaming crystal sparkled in the warm, atmospheric lighting above and the room embodied a surreal, dreamlike quality that Will craved. 

He smiled a genuine closed-lip grin at an impeccably dressed Hannibal, who was in the process of picking up the perfect bite on his fork. It was now Will's turn to observe the other man consume the meat _he_ had hunted for and cooked into a meal. The content smile and smooth bob of Hannibal's Adam's apple as he swallowed caused Will to do likewise in part empathic mimicry and desire. 

"Excellent work, Will," Hannibal praised, and he blushed. "Does this dish hearken you back to simpler times?"

Will considered this as he took a bite. "Things were never simple for me."

"No, I suppose not," the man exhaled a chuckle through his nose.

"It's in complexity that I find myself most at ease. There's always a next step, always something to move on to in order to solve a problem."

"Does boredom really frighten you so much?" 

"It's not so much the boredom as it is the feeling useless."

"Useless? Or helpless?" Hannibal flashed a benign smile, though his words were anything but.

Will's brow furrowed as he mulled the question over. He knew the answer but took another bite to delay voicing his vulnerability. 

"Helpless," he swallowed. "But you knew that already."

Hannibal hummed in affirmation as he took a sip from his wine. 

"Tell me, are you feeling helpless now?" His dark eyes met Will's.

Will's jaw clenched and the fire in his eyes wavered as moisture gathered against his dark lashes.

 _Of course he felt fucking helpless_. 

He knew that no matter what he did—no matter who he cooked into his dinners, no matter the blood he spilled in his righteous avenging fury, no matter how much alcohol he went through to numb his aching mind—nothing would make him feel any more whole than the shell of a being that he now was.

Nothing would bring _him_ back. 

His silverware clattered to the plate beneath his hands and he was suddenly back in the shitty studio rental, alone. He pushed the half-empty plate as far away as he could in disgust, and it slid off the counter and to the floor, breaking into pieces. 

He sighed and walked to the whiskey by the bed before turning back to address the mess. He took a few long swigs as he stared down at the shattered ceramic and spilled food. It reminded him of the spilled wine and shattered glass from _that_ night. He set the bottle on the counter, shook his head, and hated himself for feeling as broken as the plate. 

He squatted down to begin picking up the larger bits of porcelain, hands shaking from the drink and distress. 

" _Fuck_!" He hissed as a large jagged piece slipped from his hand, slicing down his palm as it went. The cut stung as blood began to flow. It felt…not _good_...but it wasn't the hollow ache in his heart, which meant it was a welcome distraction. 

Part of him wanted to get up and reach for the first aid kit nestled in the duffle bag. But part of him wanted more. He wanted anything that made him feel something other than empty. 

He looked dazedly to his other hand, holding the pieces of ceramic he had collected thus far. Mind fuzzy, he closed his fingers into a fist over the shards, feeling each cut burst through the tension of his calloused skin like a popping bubble. He clenched tighter for a moment, digging the pieces deeper, and then released, laying his palm flat so he could watch the stained fragments tumble to the floor again. 

He stayed frozen in place and watched drops of crimson splat on the linoleum. He lifted the injured hands in front of his face and turned them side to side, mesmerized by the slow-moving rivulets glimmering in the fluorescent light as they flowed down his arms. 

He wasn't sure how long had passed before a familiar hand touched firm on his shoulder. 

"This will not fix the helplessness," the soothing words cut through his dissociation and cleared away the dust that had gathered on his brain.

Will stood, knees cracking from the strain of squatting for so long, and turned around. Hannibal encircled his arms around him in an embrace, and he let his dripping hands rest limply between them. Caring fingers carded through his wild hair and he rested his heavy head on the man's comforting shoulder. 

"I just…" he nestled into Hannibal's neck and tried to swallow the lump in his throat, "I feel empty."

Hannibal pressed a kiss to his ear. 

He pushed back against Hannibal's chest, bloody handprints staining the man's tan cashmere sweater. The arms encircling his waist stayed around him.

"Hannibal, please, I—" He needed room to breathe. "It's too much." 

He broke from the hug to stagger back into the kitchen. Having regained some semblance of self-preservation, Will skirted around the shattered mess to the sink, where he began to rinse off the dozens of tiny bleeding cuts on his hands. 

"What would you have me do? Anything, darling, you need only ask." Hannibal stayed in place, letting Will have his moment to recalibrate alone without pushing him further with more physical contact. 

Will's hands gripped the sides of the sink to brace himself. "Just…" his eyes fluttered closed. "Don't leave. Not yet." 

"Of course, Will."

He finished washing his sliced hands with soap and water. Assessing the damage, he figured nothing was so deep as to require stitches and everything was beginning to clot closed. From beside the sink, he grabbed a wad of paper towels to aid in his renewed effort to clean the floor. Something about Hannibal's presence calmed him and made the task effortless. It probably said something about his abandonment issues, but he would be damned if he would add his own name to the list of people who psychoanalyzed his thought patterns.

Appearing to sense a change in his demeanor, Hannibal walked slowly over to him as he threw away the last bits of the shattered plate. Will continued putting away the rest of the food and cleaning up the rest of the kitchen because he knew if he didn’t do it then, he never would. Hannibal just stood and watched. As usual, the man waited for Will to make the first move, and it irked him. He was treating Will like an abused animal, observing every minute expression to determine how best to help the poor thing while keeping himself a safe distance away, far out of reach from any claws or teeth.

"You don't have to treat me like damaged goods, Hannibal." It came out more scathing than intended. "I dealt with it enough from Alana and Jack. Don't you dare do it too."

"I would presume to do no such thing." He took a step forward. "Though I would also not burden you unnecessarily."

"The fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"I care for you, Will. I do not wish to be a source of pain for you."

"Oh so _now_ you're worried about my well-being and happiness?" He flung the used paper towels into the trash can. 

"In my own way, I always have." Hannibal crossed his arms.

"That's fucking _rich_ ," he hissed as he spun to face the other man. "You _cared_ about me when you were sawing through my skull? I thought you were just hungry."

"Have we not _both_ had our pound of flesh?"

Will scoffed.

"And what about you?" Hannibal's tongue was sharp as he sought eye contact.

"What about me?" His fists curled at his sides and he felt the twinge of cuts reopening.

"You," he gestured with a blasé hand, "you push people away in fear of facing what you feel it says about yourself if they leave. You push _me_ away. All so you have the illusion of control. It's a horrible substitute for a coping skill, darling."

The fire was back, roaring fiercely in Will's eyes as he rapidly closed the distance between himself and Hannibal. "I've told you," his pointer finger poked hard at the other man's chest, "that you won't like me when I'm psychoanalyzed, _darling_." Will fumed in Hannibal's face, nostrils flaring.

"So you did." The man's features softened slightly but it was clear he felt no remorse.

"Fuck you," Will shoved Hannibal back hard and turned to walk away, when a wrist was caught in a firm grasp, preventing his escape. He turned and sucker-punched Hannibal across his sharp cheekbone with his free hand. 

The blow lit something predatory in the other man's eyes. They glistened dark and hard as flint as a hand shot up to grab Will's throat, shoving him hard against the counter. The sharp edge of the tile counter pressed relentlessly into the small of his back as he stared defiantly at Hannibal. He gripped at the man’s sweater and pulled him into a bruising kiss. The hand around his throat tightened and a hand at his hip grasped him closer. Will was desperate.

Hannibal suddenly pulled out of the kiss and stepped back, a falling smirk on his face as he continued to hold Will by the neck. When he let go and his hands dropped to his side, Will whimpered at the loss.

"N-no, please…" he scrambled forward.

Hannibal sighed and gently pulled Will towards his chest, cupping his cheeks with loving hands and tilting Will's face towards his. "My dear Will," Hannibal’s voice was achingly tender as he brushed away the tears that were starting to fall. He sighed, "you need to make a decision."

Will's eyes searched Hannibal's for some clue to what he meant.

"I know it pains you both when I am with you and when I am absent. Decide which pain you will bear and I shall respect the choice you make, but I will no longer be a tool used to torture yourself for any guilt you feel concerning my death."

"I—"

"You do not have to decide tonight, _mano mielė_. Think on it." Hannibal placed a soft kiss on his forehead and the weeping corners of his eyes. 

"I will," he leaned further into the embrace, craving skin contact and wiping his nose against the soft material of Hannibal's sweater. "C-could you hold me tonight? Please...Hannibal...I need to feel you."

"Of course, _mylimasis_. Anything."

Will sucked in a grounding breath and wiped his face one final time before moving away and towards the lightswitch, turning off the kitchen light. He bandaged the wounds on his hands so they wouldn’t reopen during the night, and brushed his teeth in the small bathroom. When he re-entered the living space, Hannibal was already lounging on the bed reading a book, bare-chested and in navy silk pajama pants. Will did the usual of checking of windows and doors and then placed the loaded pistol from his waistband and the key from around his neck on the nightstand alongside the bottle of whiskey. He stripped down to his boxers and climbed into the surprisingly decent bed.

Hannibal closed his book with a click of the hardcover binding, turned off the table lamp, and settled in under the covers beside Will. He brushed a lock of hair out of Will’s face and smiled gently. Will’s heart fluttered. It always did when he looked at him like that. He scooted closer and nestled under Hannibal’s arm, cheek pressed against the side of his broad chest. 

Despite history suggesting he should feel differently, Will always felt the safest when he was in Hannibal’s arms. Even when an ear was being forced down his throat. Even when he was being gutted by a hooked knife. Even when he was shot and bleeding in the middle of Florence. Even when he knew Jack and Dolarhyde were probably close on their heels. Even when Hannibal was dying. Even now.

He stayed that way for a while, content until he decided he wanted to tilt his head up into a kiss and brush his fingers across the man’s bare ribs. He needed to be closer—to feel his skin. Hannibal turned onto his side and wove his fingers through the wild hair at the back of Will’s head. Will pulled him even closer, his arm wrapping around his waist until their legs could intertwine. He deepened the kiss, tongue tracing Hannibal’s full lips, and let loose a soft moan. 

Hannibal came up for air and whispered into Will’s ear. “I was under the impression you just wanted to be held. Is this another desperate grasp for stability?”

They held each other tighter and then Will was panting into the night as he felt his face and jaw and throat being languidly explored by the other’s tongue and lips and teeth. Warmth pooled low in his gut and he clutched frantically at Hannibal’s hips until they were slotted together. 

“Are you complaining?” Will’s fingers dipped beneath the elastic of Hannibal’s pajamas.

He growled when Will moved his hand lower. “Never.”

* * *

Jack Crawford was a smart man. Regardless, this puzzle didn’t seem to be a particularly difficult one to solve. With the callback to Miriam Lass and the severed arm from the unmarked package being identified as Brian Zeller's, he knew the first place to look for the missing man. 

Sirens blaring and lights cutting red and blue through the early evening darkness, he sped his SUV as fast as he safely could all twenty-odd miles from FBI Headquarters to the cabin in Somerville, Virginia. To the cabin where they had found Lass. 

He couldn't believe his own foolishness. He should have sent an armed patrol to every site of significance to Lecter's crimes the second he found Chilton. But he didn't. And he knew that whatever state he discovered Zeller in was partially his fault. He wasn't going to make that mistake again. Of all the qualities he still felt confident Will Graham possessed, he knew it was folly to underestimate the man.

Jimmy Price sat in the passenger's seat next to him, clutching white-knuckled onto the grab bar at the window in fear and anxious anticipation. His usual effervescence was all but gone as he sat in silence the whole way. The drive on winding roads past blurring trees seemed to drag on for eternity, and the acidic dread threatening to pour from Jack’s stomach got more intense as the minutes ticked by. By the pallor of Price’s skin, he could tell the man was feeling similarly.

The gravel crunching under the tires as the weathered cabin came into view woke them both from their anxious stupor and Jack had barely put the engine in park before he was jumping out of the door and running towards the building, gun drawn. The sound of other vehicles pulling up was muted by the roar of pulsing blood in his ears. He reached a tentative hand towards the front door and pulled it open, surprised to find it unlocked.

The musty interior was dark and damp. Jack removed a flashlight from his pocket and clicked it on. Motes of dust floated through the beam as it swept from side to side, looking for any evidence of life. 

“Clear!” Jack shouted. 

“BRIAN?” Price was close behind, regulation Glock and flashlight similarly in hand.

Jack held his breath and strained his ears to hear anything coming from the inside. He heard nothing in response.

They continued to survey the room, looking thoroughly for any signs of key evidence or imminent danger as they made their way to the two covered wells they knew were in the middle of the space. 

“Clear!”

“Price, get over here and help me!” 

Jimmy scurried over to where Jack was now bending down to open the hatch of the first well and shined his flashlight so they could see what they were doing.

Jack heaved the lid open and peered into the same empty, murky water he had seen once before many years ago. His heart beat rapidly in his chest, knowing that if Zeller wasn’t at the bottom of the second well, he would probably never find him in time...if the man was even still alive.

He shifted to the other well and lifted the hatch, not even daring to look at first in case all hope was lost.

They both nearly vomited in relief when they saw the crumpled, shivering man at the bottom. He was covered in dried blood and cowered away from the intruding light, clutching himself in the fetal position. 

He was alive.

“It’s him, get ERT!” 

Without hesitation, Price sprinted from the room to the waiting vehicles outside.

“Zeller?” Jack called, as comforting as he could manage. The man still startled weakly at the noise. “It’s us, we’ve come to get you out of here.”

The room lit with more lights as the medics rushed in with their equipment and a stretcher. After a few minutes, Zeller’s pale, limp body was dragged from the hole and set upon by emergency personnel. Jack ran after them as they carted the man to the waiting ambulance, yelling to Agent Miller that he was in charge until they returned. Crime scene analysts flooded into the cabin behind him as he and Price jumped into the SUV and followed the wailing transport to the hospital. There was no use sitting at the scene at this point—they knew who had done it, and trusted their colleagues to be thorough enough in the meantime.

The two men trekked down outdated, sterile corridors to the waiting room. It was going to be a long night. They were about two shitty vending machine coffees in when someone finally came to update them.

“I’m Dr. Rashad Amin, I operated on Mr. Zeller,” the tall man in green surgical attire announced as he shook their tremulous hands. “He’s stable.” 

“Oh thank God,” Jimmy exhaled and squeezed his eyes shut momentarily to prevent tears from spilling over.

Jack nodded, heavy head a little lighter. “When can we see him?”

“He’s just coming out of post-op observation, so it should be about an hour until he’s set up in his room. He’s in bad shape, but he should make it through the night.”

“How bad?” Price was fidgeting with the plastic lid of his styrofoam cup.

“He lost a lot of blood, but I’m more concerned about infection. His stump was exposed to unsanitary conditions for a while, and we had to take off a little more than we typically do to play it safe.”

Jack tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He knew the arm he had been delivered matched Zeller’s fingerprints, but part of him wanted to believe the scans were wrong. “How much?”

“Not much—a centimeter or two. If recovery progresses as planned, he should still be eligible for a prosthetic.”

“Thanks, doctor.” 

The man nodded and turned to leave, but caught himself before imparting a last piece of advice. “When he wakes up, he may have trouble remembering what happened at first, so a gentle approach might go a long way.”

Dr. Amin left and Jack and Jimmy were alone once more to pace the room as the sound of home-improvement shows played from the wall-mounted TV in the corner. 

At just past midnight, they were escorted to room 304, where a sleeping, slightly less pale Zeller lay. Bags containing blood and antibiotics and fluids hung like fruit from an IV pole. The sound of his steady breathing and the regular beeps of the heart monitor put the two men more at ease. Still, the sight of a colleague and friend in a hospital bed was a more familiar one than they liked. 

Jack leaned back in the uncomfortable chair by the window and nodded off, emotionally and physically exhausted as he watched Price gingerly pull the blanket over Brian’s shoulders.

He faded into slumber.

“Jack,” a voice called as he was shaken back to consciousness. Morning light streamed in through the cracked blinds covering the window. “He’s awake.”

He cleared the sleep from his throat and stood up.

Brian Zeller’s eyes were open, glassy from pain medications and the weight of surviving trauma. His bed was inclined into more of a sitting position, his bandaged stump plainly visible. Price sat back down in the chair he had pulled up right next to the bed and folded his hands in his lap. 

“How are you feeling?”

“ _Really_ , Jack?” Price sarcased.

What caught Jack’s attention the second after he rubbed the sand from his eyes was Zeller’s left arm—or what remained of it.

“Like shit,” Brian groaned. 

Jack’s mind raced back to the arm in the box. It was cut off below the elbow, but his stump ended a few inches below his shoulder. That was quite a bit more than the centimeter or two the doctor had estimated they took.

“I’m glad to see you awake, Zee," Jack acknowledged.

_Which means…_

“Would you excuse me a moment?” He charged past the door and into the hallway. He walked to the end of the hall before pulling out his phone and dialing the agent he left in charge when he left the scene. 

The call connected, and before Miller could answer, Jack blurted, “Did you find any evidence of human remains? Any body parts?”

“Uh, no sir. Just blood. Nothing else yet. Why?” 

“Notify me immediately if you do.”

He hung up, his worst fears all but confirmed. Will had taken Chilton’s heart as a message, sure, but that same logic surely didn’t extend to a chunk of elbow. 

_He's eating them._

* * *

Will awoke to his alarm at dawn in an empty bed with no signs suggesting he was ever anything but alone in the first place. He was used to the panic attacks that always followed these moments of clarity, but it never made them any easier. He reached blindly for the bottle of whiskey on the nightstand. He needed to dull the pain of the ache in his heart that grew worse with every beat.

"How ever did you survive without me?" Hannibal tutted from across the room. He was sitting in the recliner, dressed in a three-piece rust and olive glen check suit, reading his book.

Will froze.

"You usually aren't here when I wake up." His fingers halted in the air inches from the bottle and moved instead to rub at his sleep-weary eyes. Hannibal was still there when he reopened them, which boosted his spirits.

"Still, you should at least have breakfast before imbibing."

Will gave a half-hearted chuckle in reply as he stood from the bed and put on his boxers from where they lay crumpled on the floor. "I'm sure I can find a drive-thru somewhere."

"You wouldn't dare," Hannibal closed his book, stood, and moved to trace a reverent hand down the knobs of Will's bare spine.

He would, and they both knew it. 

Will pressed a teasing kiss to the tip of Hannibal’s nose and peeked under the bandages on his hands to make sure all was well. Everything was pretty thoroughly scabbed, and he’d be wearing gloves when leaving evidence was an issue, so he took the wrappings off. They were more of a hindrance than anything. He rummaged through his duffle bag for an outfit to wear, picking a brown cashmere pullover to go over a white button-down and grabbing the pair of jeans that he had worn the day prior from the floor. 

“Nah, I’ll probably just have leftovers. Unconventional, but it would be a shame to let him go to waste.” He pulled the clothes on, tucked the gun from the nightstand into his waistband, placed the key around his neck, and ran a hand through his bed-head.

“Quite.”

He laced up his boots and walked into the kitchen. “Maybe I’ll leave a plate for the lady upstairs,” he joked. “I'm understanding your motivations a little better these days.” 

“Shame it took you so long,” Hannibal chuckled as he followed him.

“Yeah...” he sighed. “It is.” He leaned his forehead on the cool metal of the fridge door and closed his eyes.

“Darling, that’s—I apologize, that’s not quite what I meant.” Hannibal spun Will around by the shoulder and kissed him softly on the cheek.

“Still,” he turned back to the fridge and opened the door. It was empty except for the singular takeout container. 

He heated up his leftovers on the stove and plated some of the steaming vegetation alongside the last bit of cornbread. He sat at the counter in the barstool next to Hannibal and ate his meal in relative silence. He was able to take the time to savor it this time without the distraction of an existential crisis. _Pretty good_.

“So, are you ready for today’s hunt?” Hannibal queried.

Will swallowed his bite, “God, I’ve been waiting forever for this one.” He ripped a piece of cornbread and stuffed it into his mouth. “Maybe the longest out of anyone, if I’m being honest.”

Hannibal flashed a devilish grin, and Will reciprocated with one equally diabolical.

Once he finished eating, he cleaned his dishes and put the rest of the collards into the takeout container and then into the cooler. He cleaned the remainder of the space as he packed up the rest of his belongings. He threw the studio keys and a few five-dollar bills, to make up for shattering the plate, onto the counter. 

He shrugged on his tan herringbone coat and slung the duffle bag over his shoulder. 

The drive to the car rental place was short, and he was able to switch cars without an issue. It was amazing how much smoother the world ran when he could throw money at a problem. From there, he drove to his next quarry as he discussed his plans with Hannibal, who sat in the passenger seat, holding his hand over the center console. 

Will parked a block away in case Jack had the place surveilled and kept his collar up as he walked, a smaller bag on his shoulder, to avoid detection. The sun was just barely coming up, but he banked on any hypothetical agents in wait to be half-asleep at this point. 

He lept up the stairs of the motel two at a time and knocked on the front door of Room 253. Fortune favors the bold, and all that.

He heard a chain moving before the deadbolt clicked unlocked. The door swung wide.

"Freddie Lounds," he said her name like it pained his mouth.

"Will Graham." She blinked owlishly. Her fiery ringlet curls were still damp from a morning shower and smelled like coconut. "Looks like I should have taken Jack Crawford up on his offer." She sauntered back into the room she came from, leaving the front door hanging open. She was nervous but hiding it well under a facade of bravado. She knew well enough what would happen if she tried to run. It would only make things worse.

"Looks like it." Will stepped into the room and removed his coat, setting the bag down in the entryway. Hannibal followed behind and closed the door quietly, locking and replacing the chain. 

"Come to give me an exclusive interview? 'Star-Crossed Cannibal Comes Clean!'" she emphasized with her hands splayed wide as she walked to sit at her makeshift desk. "What _did_ you do with poor Dr. Chilton's heart?"

Will chuckled flatly. "I _do_ have a story for you, actually." 

She grabbed a nearby pen and notepad as she crossed one leg over the other, leaning forward. "I'm listening."

"You know—despite the fact that I find you _fucking unbearable_ , I've never doubted your intelligence or creativity," Will set his coat on the edge of the bed and stepped towards Freddie, hands stuffed in his pockets. "Which is why I'm here to provide you with a unique opportunity."

"Get to the point, Graham."

He flashed her an unsettling, beaming smile and she flinched.

"I'm going to let you have the honor of reporting on your own murder."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a laptop now! No more typing this on mobile, which means it's all over for you bitches. <3


End file.
